The  New  World 

^y   Arthur    R.   Gray 


txhravy  of  t:he  t:heolo0ical  ^^minavy 

PRINCETON  .  NEW  JERSEY 

FROM  THE  LIBRARY  OF 
ROBERT  ELLIOTT  SPEER 

Gray,  Artnur  r^. 
The  new  worla 


THE  NEW  WORLD 


^^^X^y   V.    ,,u 


THE  NEW  W 


BY  v^ 

ARTHUR   R.   GRAY 


The  Domestic  and  Foreign  Missionary  Societv 

281    FOURTH    AVENUE 
NEW  YORK 


/^AO 


"Et  vidi  caelum  novum,  et  terrain  novam.  Primum  enim 
caelum,  et  prima  terra  abiit,  et  mare  jam  non  est." — Rev.  xxi.  1, 
Vulgate. 


INTRODUCTION 

The  New  World  is  One  World  and  each  inhabitant 
of  it,  wherever  he  may  live,  is  responsible,  accord- 
ing as  God  has  prospered  him,  in  some  measure  for 
the  whole  of  it. 

Long  time  the  Western  Hemisphere  had  been  hidden 
from  those  who  knew  of  Christ  and  His  liberating 
Gospel.  At  length  God  guided  the  wise  man  from 
Genoa  across  the  unplumbed  seas  and  the  New  World 
was  found — and  that  new  world,  mind  you,  was  not 
North  America,  nor  South  America,  but  the  Americas, 
— ^both  of  them. 

For  many  years  a  large  part  of  the  present  United 
States  was  under  one  and  the  same  flag  with  Peru 
and  Colombia  and  Cuba  and  Mexico  and  many  other 
Spanish-speaking  states.  The  dominions  of  the  Don 
were  limited  by  parallels  of  longitude,  not  of  latitude. 
The  Nuevo  Mundo  meant  the  northern  and  southern 
continents. 

Thus,  from  the  very  beginning,  in  the  minds  of 
men,  the  New  World  was  one. 

As  it  grew  toward  manhood,  and  began  to  prepare 
for  participation,  on  a  basis  of  equality,  with  the  so- 
called  Old  World,  this  fact  of  oneness  was  emphasized 
by  the  manner  in  which  statesmen  and  thinkers  on  both 
sides  of  the  Equator  thought  along  similar  lines. 
Though  Latinism  of  feeling  and  thought  and  action 
may  produce  a  people  superficially  different  from  the 
Anglo-Saxons;  though  the  Colombians  and  Brazilians 
and  Cubans  and  all  the  rest  of  them  are  in  many  things 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

as  unlike  North  Americans  as  they  can  be,  still  in 
matters  political  all  have  the  same  aspirations.  Wash- 
ington and  Bolivar,  true  exemplars  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
and  Latin  characteristics,  were  Americans. 

Despite  differences  innumerable,  and  the  deep  sym- 
pathy between  Latin  Americans  and  Latin  Europeans, 
in  recent  years  the  Pan-American  Union  has  been 
formed.  Through  it  in  the  future  the  New  World 
dreams  of  advancing  the  cause  of  democracy  and 
liberty. 

It  was  because  our  people  instinctively  felt  this  one- 
ness a  hundred  years  ago  that  they  applauded  President 
Monroe  when  in  his  famous  message  he  proclaimed 
the  identity  of  the  interests  of  the  two  continents. 
Men  may  laugh  at  the  Monroe  doctrine  in  these  days, 
and  Latin  Americans  may  very  naturally  resent  it,  but 
that  in  no  way  affects  the  issue,  which  is  that  the 
North  and  South  Americans  have  both  benefited  by  it. 
It  has  stood  for  that  hemispherical  solidarity  in  things 
political  which  people  of  the  Americas  feel  instinc- 
tively. Its  influence  for  good  was  recognized  at  a 
branch  meeting  of  the  Pan-American  Conference  in 
New  York  on  the  27th  of  December,  1915.  The  pre- 
siding officer,  Eduardo  Suarez,  the  ambassador  from 
Chili,  said  in  his  opening  address : — 

Although  representing  only  one  of  the  republics,  I  am  con- 
vinced that  I  am  interpreting  the  thought  and  feeling  of 
each  and  every  one  of  them  when  I  say  the  Government  of 
the  United  States  today  completes  the  erasing  with  a  friendly 
hand  of  the  last  traces  of  past  misunderstandings  and  erro- 
neous interpretations  which  had  in  former  times  clouded  the 
horizon  of  America. 

No  doubt,  there  had  prevailed  before  now  in  the  atmos- 
phere in  American  foreign  offices,  uncertainties,  misgivings, 
and  suspicions  whenever  the  well-inspired  and  unquestionably 
beneficial  declaration  by  President  Monroe  was  brandished 
in  the  United  States  with  a  view  to  practical  application. 
There  was  lacking  the  precise  definition  of  the  meaning  and 
extent  of  that  memorable  document  and  many  of  the  weaker 


INTRODUCTION  ru 

American  nations  seemed  afraid  and  apprehensive  whenever 
the  news  reached  them  of  a  possible  application  of  its 
declarations. 

Thus,  the  Monroe  Doctrine  might  have  been  a  threat  so 
long  as  it  was  only  a  right  and  an  obligation  on  the  part 
of  the  United  States.  Generalized  as  a  derivation  from  the 
Pan-American  policy  supported  by  all  the  republics  in  the 
continent  as  a  common  force  and  a  common  defence,  it  has 
become  a  solid  tie  of  union,  a  guarantee,  a  bulwark  for  our 
democracies.  All  the  republics  of  America  are  capable  of 
setting  up  their  own  destiny,  and  all  are  unquestionably  bound 
to  serve  in  their  turn  as  exponents  of  our  civilization  and 
progress. 

Let  us,  we  delegates  with  the  Latin  soul,^  prove  that  we 
are  equally  capable  of  generating  energy  to  insure  the  well- 
being  of  human  kind,  and  that  we  are  likewise  able  to 
assist  with  a  contribution  worthy  of  our  brothers  of  Saxon- 
America  in  the  work  of  Pan-American  communion.   .    .    . 

Yes,  the  New  World  is  one  world  and  the  New 
World  has  a  contribution  to  make  to  the  peoples  of  the 
rest  of  the  world.  It  is  surrounded  by  a  cloud  of  wit- 
nesses who  are  watching  the  great  experiment  which 
it  is  making  in  government. 

Just  because  this  New  World  of  ours  has  this  brave 
task  imposed  upon  it,  each  and  every  citizen  should 
feel  responsible  for  the  progress  of  the  whole  of 
it.  And  specially  those  of  us  to  whom  has  been 
entrusted  the  knowledge  of  the  true  relation  be- 
tween catholicity  and  individualism,  between  authority 
and  liberty,  between  dogma  and  scholarship, — we  to 
whom  this  precious  gospel  has  been  given  owe  a 
double  duty  to  every  nation  in  the  New  World  as  it 
struggles  toward  the  ideals  set  up  by  Washington  and 
Bolivar.  Without  our  message  their  ambitions  can 
never  be  realized.  God  give  us  wisdom  and  power 
so  to  play  our  part  that  the  labors  of  the  Conquista- 
dores  and  the  struggles  of  the  liberators  may  be  justi- 
fied and  the  New  World  made  an  exemplar  of  Christian 
Democracy  among  the  nations  of  the  earth. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   I 

FOR  GOD,  FOR  GLORY,  AND  FOR  GOLD 

Tells  how  the  New  World  was  found  and  how  the  conquerors 
were   conquered    Page  3 

CHAPTER   n 

CONQUISTADORES  OF  THE  CROSS 

Tells  how  the  Church  began  to  labor  in  the  New  World, 
and  what  glorious  things  some  of  its  servants  did...  ^Pay^  31 

CHAPTER   HI 

THE  ROCK   WHENCE  WE  ARE   HEWN 

Tells  of  the  wind  which  an  unwise  government  sowed  in  the 
New  World  and  of  some  of  the  things  which  accounted  for 
its  unwisdom Page  60 

CHAPTER   IV 

NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES.      PORTO  RICO  AND  THE  CANAL   ZONE 

Tells  how  the  people  of  that  part  of  the  New  World  called 
the  United  States  took  over  the  control  of  parts  of  the 
Spanish  Dominion,  and  how  our  Church  has  taken  up  its 
share   of   the   responsibility Page  87 

CHAPTER   V 

NEAR  NEIGHBORS.      CUBA   AND   HAITI 

Tells  how  our  duty  toward  certain  of  our  New  World  neigh- 
bors has  compelled  us  to  undertake  some  other  tasks. 

Page  127 


X  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   VI 

TWO   HUGE  REPUBLICS.       MEXICO  AND  BRAZIL 

Tells  how  we  are  exhibiting  interest  in  the  welfare  of  New 
World   republics   of   prodigious   possibilities Page  176 

APPENDIX   I 
On  the  Pronunciation  of  Spanish  Words Page  225 

APPENDIX   II 
The  Monroe  Doctrine Page  227 

APPENDIX   III 
The  American  Church  Missionary  Society Page  230 

APPENDIX   IV 

On  the  Work   done  by   Other  Churches  and  Religious 
Bodies  in  South   America Page  231 

APPENDIX   V 
Bibliography    Page  233 

Index    Page  239 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

The  Pan-American  Building  at  Washington Frontispiece 

OPPOSITE   PACK 

Spring  at  Aguadilla  on   the   Isle  of   Porto   Rico   where 

Columbus   Once   Filled   His   Water-Casks 10 

Toscanelli's  Map,  Used  by  Columbus  in  His  First  Voyage     18 
An  Old  Cut  Depicting  Balboa  taking  Possession  of  the 

South   Sea    26 

Bartholomew  De  Las  Casas,  from  a  Portrait 34 

Cathedral  of  San  Francisco,  Santo  Domingo  City,  Oldest 

Cathedral  in  the  New  World;  begun  in  1514 42 

St.  John's  Church,   San  Juan 90 

St.  Luke's  Hospital,  Ponce 98 

Church  of  the  Resurrection,  El  Coto 104 

Flooding   Gatun's    Lock    Chambers,    Preparatory    to    the 

Passage  of  the  First  Vessel  through  the  Canal 112 

Christ  Church,  Colon 119 

The  Building  in  Matanzas  in  which  the  Fieles,  a  Jesus 

Congregation,  was  Organized 126 

Our  Cathedral  of  the  Santisima  Trinidad,  Havana 126 

A  Confirmation  Class  at  Sabana  Bonito,  Constancia  Plan- 
tation, Bishop  Hulse  in  the  background 134 

Jamaican  Children  in  a  Church  School  at  Guantanamo..   140 

Bishop   Holly    156 

Confirmation   Class  in  Haiti 163 

A  Haitian  Soldier  170 

The  Mary  Josephine  Hooker  Memorial  School  and  Or- 
phanage,   Mexico    City    178 

St.  Andrew's  Industrial  School  and  Farm,  Guadalajara..   186 

Church  of  the  Mediator,  Santa  Maria 200 

Congregation  at  Dom  Pedrito:  Bishop  Kinsolving  in  the 
center   214 

MAPS 

Porto    Rico    102 

Canal   Zone    118 

Cuba   138 

Haiti   162 

Mexico   190 

Southern  Brazil   208 

xi 


THE  NEW  WORLD 


CHAPTER   I 
FOR  GOD,  FOR  GLORY,  AND  FOR  GOLD 

A  wilderness  of  heaving  waters;  as  far  as  the  eye 
can  reach  nothing  but  the  short,  blue-gray  chop  of  the 
South  Atlantic;  above,  a  few  querulous  seagulls, 
screeching  a  complaint  because  of  the  presence  of  a 
strange  invader  within  their  realms  of  silence;  the 
object  of  their  invectives,  a  little  ship — called  such  by 
courtesy,  for  it  is  only  ninety  feet  long — which  bobs 
and  lurches  to  the  wave's  command.  On  board  the 
vessel  a  group  of  lightly  clad  men  gaze  in  bewildered 
awe  at  the  endless  spaces  about  them.  In  the  bow  are 
several  who  search  the  horizon  to  the  westward  for 
the  coasts  of  far  Japan,  or  Cipango  as  they  have 
learned  to  call  it  from  the  reports  of  Ser  Marco 
Polo.  On  the  poop,  near  the  steersman,  stands  a 
stoical,  silent  man,  whose  motionless  figure  and  hungry 
eyes  bear  testimony  to  long  days  of  doubt  and  danger 
well  endured.  Ever  and  anon  he  turns  to  examine  a 
rough  map  whereon  is  pictured  what  the  geographers 
of  early  days  imagined  might  be  found  by  adventurers 
who  sought  the  Indies  by  the  way  of  the  setting  sun. 

Strange  maps  those  were!  And  wonderful  to  us 
sophisticated  folk  was  the  ignorance  of  those  other- 
wise learned  geographers  whose  only  source  of  in- 
formation came  from  the  travellers  who  sought  Japan 
and  China— the  credulity  of  which  travellers  you  re- 
member was  commemorated  in  the  jest,  now  meta- 
morphosed into  the  proper  name,  La  Chine,  which 

3 


4  THE  NEW  WORLD 

is  still  attached  to  the  rapids  west  of  Montreal.  And 
wonderful  were  the  mariners  who,  with  naught  to  help 
them  but  faulty  maps,  drove  their  frail  barks  westward. 

How  did  they  ever  do  it?  To  us  a  chartless  ocean, 
or  a  coast  without  its  complement  of  lighthouses,  is 
a  thing  of  terror.  To  them,  unaccustomed  to  modern, 
mechanical  navigation,  what  we  call  prudence  was  a 
thing  unknown  !  Had  it  not  been,  how  could  they  ever 
have  gone  beyond  the  Canaries  or  let  the  friendly 
pillars  of  Hercules  sink  below  the  horizon?  It  was 
bad  enough  to  have  to  sail  uncharted  oceans,  but  to 
have  to  do  so  without  knowing  where  one  was  going! 
That  was  the  supreme  test. 

Perhaps  a  parenthetic  word  or  two  about  the  six- 
teenth century  mariner's  method  of  navigation  would 
increase  our  understanding  and  appreciation  of  their 
work : 

By  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century  (writes  Mr.  Fiske), 
the  compass  had  come  to  be  quite  generally  used,  and  the 
direction  of  a  ship's  course  could  be  watched  continuously 
in  foul  and  fair  weather  alike.  For  taking  the  sun's  alti- 
tude rude  astrolabes  and  jackstaffs  were  in  use,  very  crazy 
affairs  as  compared  with  the  modern  quadrant,  but  sufficiently 
accurate  to  enable  a  well-trained  observer,  in  calculating  his 
latitude,  to  get  somewhere  within  two  or  three  degrees  of 
the  truth.  In  calculating  longitude  the  error  was  apt  to  be 
much  greater,  for  in  the  absence  of  chronometers  there  were 
no  accurate  means  for  marking  differences  in  time.  It  was 
necessary  to  depend  upon  the  dead-reckoning,  and  the  custom 
was  first  to  sail  due  north  or  south  to  the  parallel  of  the 
place  of  destination  and  then  to  turn  at  right  angles  and 
sail  due  east  or  west.  Errors  of  eight  or  even  ten  degrees 
were  not  uncommon.  Thus  at  the  end  of  a  long  outward 
voyage  the  ship  might  find  itself  a  hundred  miles  or  more 
to  the  north  or  south,  and  six  or  seven  hundred  miles  to 
the  east  or  west,  of  the  point  at  which  it  had  been  aimed. 
Under  all  these  difficulties,  the  approximations  made  to  cor- 
rect sailing  by  the  most  skillful  mariners  were  sometimes 
wonderful.  Doubtless  this  very  poverty  of  resources  served 
to  sharpen  their  watchful  sagacity.  To  sail  the  seas  was  in 
those  days  a  task  requiring  high  mental  equipment;  it  was 


FOR  GOD,  FOR  GLORY,  AND  FOR  GOLD    5 

no  work  for  your  commonplace  skipper.  Human  faculty 
was  taxed  to  its  utmost,  and  human  courage  has  never  been 
more  grandly  displayed  than  by  the  glorious  sailors  of  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries. ^ 

But  to  return  to  our  little  vessel  and  its  crew. 
Though  the  silent  commander  appears  to  the  eye  calm 
and  serene,  within  his  mind  are  a  multitude  of  anxious 
thoughts.  More  than  2,700  miles  of  water  have  been 
left  behind  since  that  6th  day  of  September  when 
they  sailed  from  Gomera  in  the  Canaries,  and  it  is 
now  the  11th  of  October.  Can  they  by  any  possibility 
have  sailed  past  Japan?  And  if  so  what  lies  to  the 
west  of  them?  Have  all  his  carefully  worked  out 
theories  been  wrong?  If  the  world  is  not  round  and 
the  back  door  to  the  Indies  not  ahead  of  them  where 
will  their  journey  end?  If  the  world  is  flat — perish 
the  foolish  thought ! — will  they  soon  reach  a  falling 
off  place? —  Thus  vast  questions  harry  his  mind  and 
drive  him  to  go  over  his  calculations  again  and  again. 

But  this  doubt  as  to  their  whereabouts  is  not  the 
worst  of  his  troubles.  For  the  past  two  weeks  his 
crew,  terrified  by  the  unending  waste  of  water,  has 
been  almost  unmanageable.  He  has  had  to  resort  to 
all  sorts  of  petty  deceptions  to  keep  them  under  control. 
Nothing  but  their  belief  in  his  superior  knowledge  has 
saved  him  thus  far.  "Surely,"  he  thought  as  he 
strained  his  weary  eyes  westward,  **land  must  be  some- 
where near  at  hand."  Those  birds,  those  bits  of 
seaweed,  they  must  indicate  something. 

Suddenly  a  green  branch  is  seen  ahead,  and  then 
a  small  stick  apparently  carved  with  an  iron  instru- 
ment. Then  those  on  the  Nina  see  a  branch  of  dog- 
rose  briar,  covered  with  flowers ! 

At  the  sight  of  these  a  thrill  runs  through  the  ship — ■ 
excited  voices  rise  from  the  now  crowded  bulwarks, 

*Fiske,  The  Discovery  of  America,  I,  315-6. 


6  THE   NEW   WORLD 

and  their  tone  is  no  longer  that  of  raucous  mutineers. 
"Land  must  be  near,"  they  shout. 

*' Whose  land,  what  land?"  the  question  rises  spon- 
taneously. "No  matter  whose  or  what,"  the  replies 
come  quickly,  "no  matter  where  it  is  or  what  it  is  like, 
it  is  land !  land !  land !" 

The  leader  from  the  poop  forthwith  promises  ten 
thousand  maravedis — a  handsome  sum  for  those  days 
even  though  it  only  amounts  to  fifteen  dollars  and 
eighty  cents  in  our  currency — to  whomever  shall  first 
see  the  shore. 

For  the  remaining  hours  of  daylight  and  on  into 
the  night  ninety  eager  pairs  of  eyes  defy  sleep  and 
scan  the  horizon. 

At  length,  about  ten  o'clock,  the  admiral  sees  from 
the  high  poop  of  the  Santa  Maria  a  distant  blaze  as 
if  somebody  were  moving  along  a  beach  with  a  torch. 
Fearing  the  effect  of  any  more  disappointments  he 
does  nothing,  but  hope  blazes  brightly  in  his  heart. 

Four  endless  hours  drag  by — then  suddenly  and 
shrilly  a  voice  thrills  across  the  waters  announcing  that 
land  is  in  sight.  It  is  a  sailor  on  the  Pinta  who  has 
made  this  marvellous  announcement,  and  before  its 
echoes  have  died  down  the  strained  bulwarks  are  again 
thronged  and  the  weary  eyes  of  weary  sailors  are  again 
looking — looking — looking. 

Though  the  light  is  only  such  as  southern  stars 
supply  they  can  all  see  something  that  has  the  appear- 
ance of  land  and  ask  to  be  allowed  to  lower  boats  that 
they  may  go  nearer  and  investigate.  Their  com- 
mander, however,  orders  them  to  abide  patiently  till 
morning — after  all  he  has  been  through  he  is  not  going 
to  take  any  risks  at  this  tremendous  moment. 

Three  more  hours  creep  by — hours  than  which  none 
ever  seemed  longer  to  mortal  men.  At  length,  however, 
the  dawn  comes  and  with  it  a  steadily  increasing  light, 
until  the  sun  himself  gets  up  and  all  is  plain. 


FOR  GOD,  FOR  GLORY,  AND  FOR  GOLD    7 

There  lies  the  land — ^it  is  no  mirage  this  time.  It  is 
the  good  hard  old  earth  whereon  man's  feet  may  tread, 
and  whereon  he  may  lay  him  down  at  night  without 
fear  of  gales  and  overwhelming  waves. 

There  lies  the  land  for  which  they  had  been  searching 
these  many  tremulous  weeks ;  the  land  about  which 
the  world  had  been  speculating  since  first  men  studied 
geography;  the  land  which  answered  the  question  of 
the  centuries,  which  proved  that  the  world  is  round. 

Columbus  and  his  crews  have  found  it.  The  old 
order  has  come  to  an  end.  The  New  World  has  been 
found !  ^ 

How  paltry  are  our  attempts  to  realize  the  sig- 
nificance of  that  event !  We  talk  glibly  about  a  change 
being  wrought  in  the  world's  history,  but  we  come 
far  from  understanding  how  great  that  change  was. 
It  is  simply  beyond  us  to  appreciate  what  it  meant 
to  have  Europe  cease  to  be  synonymous  with  the 
''world."  And  yet  appreciate  it  to  some  extent  we 
must  if  we  are  to  profit  by  the  fact  that  we  are  in- 
habitants of  the  New  World ;  if  we  are  to  live  up  to  the 
privileges  which  are  given  to  those  to  whom  have 
been  entrusted  the  duties  of  new  world  citizenship. 

A  New  World  had  come  into  being — it  is  still  new — 
and  in  proportion  as  we  understand  how  vitally  this 
New  World  can  and  must  influence  the  progress  of 
humanity — of  God's  children — shall  we  be  able  to  do 
our  part  in  bringing  the  whole  round  world  to  the  feet 
of  Christ  its  Lord.  Upon  our  shoulders  rests  the 
burden.  Shall  we  prove  worthy?  Shall  we  so  labor 
that  the  prodigious  discovery  of  Columbus  shall  be 
made  worth  while? 

We  cannot  dwell  further  on  the  story  of  Columbus. 
Enough  has  surely  been  said  to  make  the  reader  ap- 

*  The  story  of  how  the  printer  Walzmiiller  came  to  give  the  name 
America  to  the  new  world  is  well  told  by  Payne,  History  of  the  New 
World  Called  America,  I,  pp.  210  fif. 


8  THE   NEW   WORLD 

preciate  the  daring  and  the  skill  and  the  perseverance 
of  the  man  and  the  men  who  first  crossed  the  unknown 
Atlantic. 

Mariners  they  were  than  whom  the  world  never  saw 
bolder.  Navigators  they  were,  clever  and  resourceful 
beyond  compare.  Save  that  the  ocean  to  the  westward 
was  open  and  free  from  reefs,  and  that  a'  little  to 
the  south  of  the  Canaries  could  be  found  a  breeze 
which  blew  steadily  toward  the  sunset — save  for  those 
two  facts  they  knew  little  or  nothing  of  the  seas 
they  plowed. 

But  the  bravery  of  the  servants  of  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella  was  not  only  displayed  upon  the  high  seas. 
On  land  many  performed  prodigies  which  make  one 
fairly  gasp  with  wonder.  Take,  for  example,  from 
among  the  many  tales  of  their  doings  the  following 
story  told  by  Prescott  about  Gonzalo  Pizarro's  expedi- 
tion to  the  headwaters  of  the  Amazon:  ^ 

Gonzalo  Pizarro  received  the  news  of  his  appointment  to 
the  government  of  Quito  v^ith  undisguised  pleasure;  not  so 
much  for  the  possession  that  it  gave  him  of  this  ancient 
Indian  province,  as  for  the  field  that  it  opened  for  discovery 
toward  the  east, — that  fabled  land  of  Oriental  spices,  which 
had  long  captivated  the  imagination  of  the  Conquerors.  He 
repaired  to  his  government  without  delay,  and  found  no 
difficulty  in  awakening  a  kindred  enthusiasm  to  his  own  in 
the  bosoms  of  his  followers.  In  a  short  time,  he  mustered 
three  hundred  and  fifty  Spaniards,  and  four  thousand  Indians. 
One  hundred  and  fifty  of  his  company  were  mounted,  and 
all  were  equipped  in  the  most  thorough  manner  for  the 
undertaking.  He  provided,  moreover,  against  famine  by  a 
large  stock  of  provisions,  and  an  immense  drove  of  swine 
which  followed  in  the  rear.  .    .    . 

It  was  the  beginning  of  1540  when  he  set  out  on  this 
celebrated  expedition.  .  .  .  The  scene  changed  as  they  entered 
the  territory  of  Quixos,  where  the  character  of  the  inhabi- 

*  These  tales  have  been  told  so  often  and  so  well  that  rather  than 
retell  them  in  his  own  words  the  author  has  selected  the  most  attractive 
renditions  and  quoted   directly  from  them. 


FOR  GOD,  FOR  GLORY,  AND  FOR  GOLD    9 

tants,  as  well  as  of  the  climate,  seemed  to  be  of  another 
description.  The  country  was  traversed  by  lofty  ranges  of 
the  Andes,  and  the  adventurers  were  soon  entangled  in  their 
deep  and  intricate  passes.  As  they  rose  into  the  more  ele- 
vated regions,  the  icy  winds  that  swept  down  the  sides  of 
the  Cordilleras  benumbed  their  limbs,  and  many  of  the 
natives  found  a  wintry  grave  in  the  wilderness.  .  .  .  On 
descending  the  eastern  slopes,  the  climate  changed;  and,  as 
they  came  on  the  lower  level,  the  fierce  cold  was  succeeded 
by  a  suffocating  heat,  while  tempests  of  thunder  and  light- 
ning, rushing  from  out  of  the  gorges  of  the  sierra,  poured 
on  their  heads  with  scarcely  any  intermission  day  or  night, 
as  if  the  offended  deities  of  the  place  were  willing  to  take 
vengeance  en  the  invaders  of  their  mountain  solitudes.  For 
more  than  six  weeks  the  deluge  continued  unabated,  and  the 
forlorn  wanderers,  wet,  and  weary  with  incessant  toil,  were 
scarcely  able  to  drag  their  limbs  along  the  soil  broken  up 
and  saturated  with  the  moisture.  .  .  .  From  the  wandering 
tribes  of  savages  whom  they  had  occasionally  met  in  their 
path,  they  learned  that  at  ten  days'  distance  ^  was  a  rich 
and  fruitful  land  abounding  with  gold,  and  inhabited  by 
populous  nations.  .  .  .  This  intelligence  renewed  his  hopes, 
and  he  resolved  to  push  the  adventure  farther.  ,  .  .  Con- 
tinuing their  march,  the  country  now  spread  out  into  broad 
savannas  terminated  by  forests,  which,  as  they  drew  near, 
seemed  to  stretch  on  every  side  to  the  very  verge  of  the 
horizon.  ...  At  every  step  of  their  way,  they  were  obliged 
to  hew  open  a  passage  with  their  axes,  while  their  garments, 
rotting  from  the  effects  of  the  drenching  rains  to  which  they 
had  been  exposed,  caught  in  every  bush  and  bramble,  and 
hung  about  them  in  shreds.  Their  provisions,  spoiled  by 
the  weather,  had  long  since  failed,  and  the  live  stock  which 
they  had  taken  with  them  had  either  been  consumed  or 
made  their  escape  in  the  woods  and  mountain  passes.  They 
had  set  out  with  nearly  a  thousand  dogs,  many  of  them  of 
the  ferocious  breed  used  in  hunting  down  the  unfortunate 
natives.  These  they  now  gladly  killed,  but  their  miserable 
carcasses  furnished  a  lean  banquet  for  the  famished  travelers, 
and  when  these  were  gone  they  had  only  such  herbs  and 
dangerous  roots  as  they  could  gather  in  the  forest.  .  .  . 
At  length  the  way-worn  company  came  on  a  broad  expanse 
of  water  formed  by  the  Napo,  one  of  the  great  tributaries 
of  the  Amazon.  .  .  .  Sorely  pressed  by  hunger,  the  ad- 
venturers determined,  at  all  hazards,  to  cross  to  the  opposite 
side,  in  hopes  of  finding  a  country  that  might  afford  them 
sustenance.    A  frail  bridge  was  constructed  by  throwing  the 


10  THE   NEW   WORLD 

huge  trunks  of  trees  across  the  chasm,  where  the  chffs,  as 
if  spHt  asunder  by  some  convulsion  of  nature,  descended 
sheer  down  a  perpendicular  depth  of  several  hundred  feet. 
Over  this  airy  causeway  the  men  and  horses  succeeded  in 
effecting  their  passage  with  the  loss  of  a  single  Spaniard, 
who,  made  giddy  by  heedlessly  looking  down,  lost  his  foot- 
ing and  fell  into  the  boiling  surges  below. 

Yet  they  gained  little  by  the  exchange.  The  country  wore 
the  same  unpromising  aspect,  and  the  'river-banks  were 
studded  with  gigantic  trees,  or  fringed  with  impenetrable 
thickets.  The  tribes  of  Indians,  whom  they  occasionally  met 
in  the  pathless  wilderness,  were  fierce  and  unfriendly,  and 
they  were  engaged  in  perpetual  skirmishes  with  them.  From 
these  they  learned  that  a  fruitful  country  was  to  be  found 
down  the  river  at  a  distance  of  only  a  few  days'  journey, 
and  the  Spaniards  held  on  their  weary  way,  still  hoping  and 
still  deceived,  as  the  promised  land  flitted  before  them,  like 
the  rainbow,  receding  as  they  advanced. 

At  length,  spent  with  toil  and  suffering,  Gonzalo  resolved 
to  construct  a  bark  large  enough  to  transport  the  weaker 
part  of  his  company  and  his  baggage.  The  forests  furnished 
him  with  timber;  the  shoes  of  the  horses  which  had  died 
on  the  road  or  been  slaughtered  for  food,  were  converted 
into  nails;  gum  distilled  from  the  trees  took  the  place  of 
pitch;  and  the  tattered  garments  of  the  soldiers  supplied  a 
substitute  for  oakum.  It  was  a  work  of  difficulty;  but  Gon- 
zalo cheered^  his  men  in  the  task,  and  set  an  example  by 
taking  part  in  their  labors.  At  the  end  of  two  months,  a 
brigantine  was  completed,  rudely  put  together,  but  strong  and 
of  sufficient  burden  to  carry  half  the  company, — the  first 
European  vessel  that  ever  floated  on  these  inland  waters. 

Into  this  ship  Pizarro  put  such  of  his  followers  as 
had  to  have  immediate  relief  from  the  toilsome 
marches,  and  over  it  he  placed  in  command  Orellana. 
Without  delay  they  sailed  away,  promising  to  return 
in  a  few  days  with  provisions  and,  if  possible,  news  of 
an  El  Dorado. 

Days  and  weeks  passed  away,  yet  the  vessel  did  not  return  ;i 
and  no  speck  was  to  be  seen  on  the  waters,  as  the  Spaniards 
strained  their  eyes  to  the  farthest  point,  where  the  line  of 

*  Orellana,  unable  to  return,  sailed  down  the  Amazon  in  liis  strange 
craft  and  along  the  coast  of  South  America  to  the  island  of  Margarita. 


FOR  GOD,  FOR  GLORY,  AND  FOR  GOLD   11 

light  faded  away  in  the  dark  shadows  of  the  foliage  on 
the  borders.  Detachments  were  sent  out,  and,  though  absent 
several  days,  came  back  without  intelligence  of  their  com- 
rades. Unable  longer  to  endure  this  suspense,  or  indeed  to 
maintain  themselves  in  their  present  quarters,  Gonzalo  and 
his  famishing  followers  now  determined  to  proceed  toward 
the  junction  of  the  rivers.  Two  months  elapsed  before  they 
accomplished  this  terrible  journey, — those  of  them  who  did 
not  perish  on  the  way, — although  the  distance  probably  did 
not  exceed  two  hundred  leagues;  and  they  at  length  reached 
the  spot  so  long  desired.   .    .    . 

Their  herculean  efforts  had,  however,  been  in  vain. 
The  ship  which  had  preceded  them  to  this  spot  was  not 
to  be  seen,  their  comrades  were  nowhere  in  evidence. 
The  only  sign  that  Spaniards  had  ever  been  there  was 
the  presence  of  a  half-starved  man  named  Vargas, 
who  had  been  one  of  the  crew  which  had  started  off 
on  the  rough  hewn  vessel.  To  him  they  turned  eagerly 
for  information.  What  had  become  of  the  vessel 
they  had  built  and  which  now  seemed  to  be  their  only 
means  of  escape  from  the  wilderness?  They  listened 
with  horror  to  the  answer  of  Vargas,  as  he  told  them 
that  the  boat  had  gone  on  down  the  river  and  left 
them  to  their  fate,  and  their  blood  almost  froze  in 
their  veins  as  they  saw  themselves  thus  deserted  in 
the  heart  of  a  remote  wilderness,  and  deprived  of  their 
only  means  of  escape.  They  made  a  spasmodic  effort 
to  prosecute  their  journey  along  the  banks,  but,  after 
some  toilsome  days,  strength  and  spirits  failed,  and 
they  gave  up  in  despair. 

Then  it  was  that  the  qualities  of  Gonzalo  Pizarro,  as  a 
fit  leader  in  the  hour  of  despondency  and  danger,  shone  out 
conspicuous.  To  advance  farther  was  hopeless.  To  stay 
where  they  were  without  food  or  raiment,  without  defense 
from  the  fierce  animals  of  the  forest,  and  the  fiercer  natives, 
was  impossible.  Only  one  course  remained;  it  was  to  return 
to  Quito.  But  this  brought  with  it  the  recollection  of  the 
past,  of  suflFerings  which  they  could  well  estimate, — hardly 
to  be  endured  even  in  imagination.     They  were  now  at  least 


12  THE   NEW   WORLD 

four  hundred  leagues  from  Quito,  and  more  than  a  year  had 
elapsed  since  they  had  set  out  on  their  painful  pilgrimage. 
How  could  they  encounter  these  perils  again? 

Yet  there  was  no  alternative.  Gonzalo  endeavored  to  re- 
assure his  followers  by  dwelling  on  the  invincible  constancy 
they  had  hitherto  displayed,  adjuring  them  to  show  them- 
selves still  worthy  of  the  name  of  Castihans.  He  reminded 
them  of  the  glory  they  would  forever  acquire  by  their  heroic 
achievement  when  they  should  reach  their  own  country. 
He  would  lead  them  back,  he  said,  by  another  route,  and  it 
could  not  be  but  that  they  should  meet  somewhere  with 
those  abundant  regions  of  which  they  had  so  often  heard.  It 
was  something  at  least  that  every  step  would  take  them 
nearer  home;  and  as,  at  all  events,  it  was  clearly  the  only 
course  now  left,  they  should  prepare  to  meet  it  like  men. 
The  spirit  would  sustain  the  body;  and  difficulties  encountered 
in  the  right  spirit  were  half  vanquished  already ! 

The  soldiers  listened  eagerly  to  his  words  of  promise  and 
encouragement.  The  confidence  of  their  leader  gave  life  to 
the  despondent.  They  felt  the  force  of  his  reasoning,  and, 
as  they  lent  a  willing  ear  to  his  assurances,  the  pride  of  the 
old  Castilian  honor  revived  in  their  bosom,  and  everyone 
caught  somewhat  of  the  generous  enthusiasm  of  their  com- 
mander. ... 

I  will  spare  the  reader  the  recapitulation  of  the  sufferings 
endured  by  the  Spaniards  on  the  retrograde  march  to  Quito. 
They  took  a  more  northerly  route  than  that  by  which  they 
had  approached  the  Amazon,  and,  if  it  was  attended  with 
fewer  difficulties,  they  experienced  yet  greater  distresses  from 
their  greater  inability  to  overcome  them.  Their  only  nourish- 
ment was  such  scanty  fare  as  they  could  pick  up  in  the  forest 
or  happily  meet  with  in  some  forsaken  Indian  settlement, 
or  wring  by  violence  from  the  natives.  Some  sickened  and 
sank  down  by  the  way,  for  there  was  none  to  help  them. 
Intense  misery  had  made  them  selfish ;  and  many  a  poor 
wretch  was  abandoned  to  his  fate,  to  die  alone  in  the  wilder- 
ness, or,  more  probably,  to  be  devoured  while  living,  by  the 
wild  animals  which  roamed  over  it. 

At  length,  In  June,  1542,  after  somewhat  more  than  a  year 
consumed  in  their  homeward  march,  the  wayworn  company 
came  on  the  elevated  plains  in  the  neighborhood  of  Quito. 
How  different  their  aspect  from  that  which  they  had  ex- 
hibited on  issuing  from  the  gates  of  the  same  capitol  two 
years  and  a  half  before,  with  high  romantic  hope  and  in 
all  the  pride  of  military  array !  Their  horses  gone,  their  arms 
broken   and   rusted,    the    skins    of    wild    animals    instead    of 


FOR  GOD,  FOR  GLORY,  AND  FOR  GOLD    13 

clothes  hanging  loosely  about  their  limbs,  their  long  and 
matted  locks  streaming  wildly  down  to  their  shoulders,  their 
faces  burned  and  blackened  by  the  tropical  sun,  their  bodies 
wasted  by  famine  and  sorely  disfigured  by  scars, — it  seemed 
as  if  the  charnal-house  had  given  up  its  dead,  as,  with  un- 
certain step,  they  glided  slowly  onward  like  a  troop  of 
dismal  spectres !  More  than  half  of  the  four  thousand  Indians 
who  had  accompanied  the  expedition  had  perished,  and  of 
the  Spaniards  only  eighty,  and  many  of  these  irretrievably 
broken   in  constitution,   returned  to   Quito. 

This  tale  represents  no  extraordinary  event  in  the 
history  of  the  Conquistadores.  It  has  been  chosen 
because  it  is  so  typical.  The  stories  of  Cortez'  con- 
quest of  Mexico,  of  Francisco  Pizarro's  conquest  of 
Peru,  of  Balboa's  and  Pedrarias'  victories  on  the 
isthmus  of  Darien,  of  Ojeda  and  Quesada  in  Central 
and  South  America — those  tales  of  conquest  are  apt 
to  mislead  us  into  thinking  that  all  went  well  with  the 
ever-conquering  Spaniards.  Just  because  they  accom- 
plished so  much  we  forget  the  horrors  they  endured, 
and  the  tale  of  Gonzalo  Pizarro  has  been  chosen  be- 
cause, lacking  the  element  of  victory,  it  enables  us  to 
realize  a  little  better  the  trials  which  they  all — whether 
victors  or  vanquished — had  to  suffer  as  they  fought 
for  the  New  World. 

As  we  read  these  things,  we  ask  involuntarily, — what 
was  it  all  about  ?  What  did  they  do  it  all  for  ?  What 
power  drove  the  Conquerors  ?  What  enticement  drew 
them?  Were  they  animated  by  the  spirit  of  a  Ulysses 
whom  Tennyson  has  made  for  us  the  incarnation  of 
restlessness?     Did  they  merely  wish: 

To  sail  beyond  the  sunset  and  the  baths 
Of  all  the  western  stars.  .    .    . 

Were  they  mere  adventurers,  loving  excitement  for 
the  sake  of  the  thrill  only?  Or  was  there  something 
behind  it  all, — something  big  and  dominating  which 


14  THE  NEW   WORLD 

drew  them  ever  onward  till  the  New  World  lay  trem- 
bling beneath  their  feet? 

No  better  summing  up  of  the  answer  to  these  ques- 
tions has  been  made  than  that  they  did  it  *'for  God, 
for  glory,  and  for  gold." 

Religious  zealots  they  were  in  the  first  place,  who 
sought  new  lands  to  add  to  their  sovereign  Pontiff's  do- 
main. Born  adventurers  they  were,  in  the  second  place, 
to  whom  the  plaudits  of  the  multitudes  were  dear  be- 
yond computation.  And  lastly,  they  were  El  Dorado 
hunters  of  the  first  magnitude. 

Nor  were  the  last  two  of  these  incentives  necessarily 
unworthy  or  peculiar  to  the  Dons.  What  men  have 
been  free  from  them  ?  Since  the  days  of  the  Phoenician 
explorers,  navigators  have  had  material  as  well  as  pa- 
triotic ambitions.  It  was  not  because  they  desired  to 
find  gold  that  the  Conquistadores  are  to  be  faulted, 
but  rather  because  in  their  search  they  forgot  that  suc- 
cess consists  in  something  more  than  heaps  of  glitter- 
ing treasure ;  because  they  forgot  that  there  was  any- 
thing else  in  the  world  except  gold.  Had  they  only 
retained  a  sense  of  proportion,  had  they  only  been  able 
to  temper  their  zeal  for  wealth,  and  labor  quite  as  much 
for  God  and  Glory,  then  would  they  have  built  under 
the  Southern  Cross  a  commonwealth  of  perennial  glory, 
a  commonwealth  which  today  would  have  stood  high 
among  the  nations  of  the  world. 

But  why  speculate  with  an  impossible  "if."  A  man 
cannot  serve  two  masters,  much  less  three.  One  of 
them  will  sooner  or  later  gain  the  mastery,  and  the 
moral  that  we  have  to  learn  from  the  story  of  the 
Conquistadores  is  that  no  heroism  and  fortitude,  no 
bravery  and  longsuffering,  no  prodigies  of  valor  and 
cunning,  will  ever  be  worth  while,  if  in  seeking  and 
finding  them  men  forget  their  duty  to  their  neighbors 
and  their  God. 


FOR  GOD,  FOR  GLORY,  AND  FOR  GOLD   15 

If  one  is  to  understand  conditions  in  any  country,  he 
must  know  somewhat  of  its  history.  What  the  United 
States  is  today  can  only  be  explained  by  telling  of  the 
Colonial  period,  of  the  Revolution  and  the  days  of 
division  and  reunion.  Even  so,  Latin  America  of  to- 
day can  only  be  understood  by  those  who  have  some 
knowledge  of  its  past.  Which  is  another  way  of  say- 
ing that  to  understand  and  sympathize  with  a  person, 
we  have  to  know  somewhat  of  the  rock  whence  he 
was  hewn.  What  follows  in  this  and  the  following 
chapters  is  an  endeavor  to  compress  within  small 
compass  a  description  of  the  rock — or  call  it  sand  if 
you  will — whence  the  peoples  and  the  governments 
to  the  south  of  us  were  hewn.  For  us  as  students  and 
would-be  neighbors  the  most  important  factor  about 
Latin  America  is  its  past. 

We  have  already  pointed  out  the  motives  which  ac- 
counted for  the  bravery  and  the  perseverance  of  the 
Conquerors,  and  which  led  to  the  opening  up  of  the 
new  world.  If,  however,  we  are  to  grasp  their  full 
significance,  we  must  look  at  them  somewhat  more 
in  detail. 

For  God 

In  the  first  place  the  Conquistadores  crossed  the 
sea  and  defied  a  thousand  dangers  for  the  glory  of 
God.  That  is  a  point  which  cannot  be  too  often 
stressed,  since  it  reveals  better  than  anything  else  the 
temper  of  the  time. 

Those  were  days,  one  is  almost  tempted  to  say,  of 
man's  innocence.  Certainly  in  comparison  to  these  days 
when  adventurers  set  out  to  find  the  poles  without  ever 
a  thought  about  God's  governance,  without  ever  a 
prayer  that  their  explorations  may  redound  to  the 
spread  of  His  Kingdom, — certainly  in  comparison  to 
these  days  those  of  Columbus  were  simple  and  full 
of  faith. 


16  THE   NEW   WORLD 

To  begin  with,  the  great  navigator  was  himself  mis- 
sionary-hearted. He  considered  himself  an  Ambas- 
sador of  Christ.  Like  David  Livingstone  he  divided 
his  interest  between  things  theological  and  things  geo- 
graphical.^ In  fact  a  most  interesting  parallel  be- 
tween Columbus  and  Livingstone  could  be  drawn,  and 
parenthetically,  one  cannot  help  remarking  how  largely 
the  world  has  depended  upon  the  servants  of  the 
Church  for  its  progress  in  the  field  of  discovery. 
To  a  very  considerable  extent,  modern  scientific  geog- 
raphy is  a  by-product  of  missions. 

To  be  more  explicit  about  Columbus,  one  can  best 
refer  to  his  writings.  In  a  letter  referring  to  a  famous 
medieval  prophecy,  he  writes,  for  example, — "The 
Rabbi  Joachim  says  that  out  of  Spain  shall  come  he  who 
will  rebuild  the  house  of  Mt.  Zion."  And  then  he  goes 
on  to  explain  how  that  he  had  been  glad  to  go  to  the 
Indies  since  in  that  adventure  he  had  expected  to  find 
gold  and  wealth  enough  to  enable  the  Church  to  send 
out  another  crusade  which  would  finally  recover  the 
Holy  City  and  the  Sepulchre  of  Christ  from  the  in- 
fidels. Or  again,  when  he  returned  the  first  time  from 
Haiti,  to  Spain,  he  writes  that  those  whom  he  had 
left  behind  would  easily  collect  a  ton  of  gold — how 
ignorant  he  was  of  Haitian  resources — while  he  was 
absent,  and  that  therefore  in  less  than  three  years  the 
capture  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  and  the  conquest  of 
Jerusalem  could  be  undertaken.  Again,  later  in  his 
life,  he  provided  that  the  accumulated  income  of  his 
property  which  was  to  be  invested  in  shares  of  the 
Bank  of  St.  George  in  Genoa,  paying  six  per  cent,  in- 
terest, should  to  the  extent  of  one-half  go  to  aid  the 
expenses  of  recovering  the  Holy  places  in  Palestine. 

^  The  author  is  not  unaware  of  Justin  Winsor's  unfavorable  estimate 
of  the  character  of  Columbus.  He  feels,  however,  the  force  of  Mr. 
Fiske's  argument  to  the  effect  that  the  critically  minded  Las  Casas  would 
not  have  admired  Columbus  so  had  he  been  what  Mr,  Winsor  would 
have  us  believe. 


FOR  GOD,  FOR  GLORY,  AND  FOR  GOLD    17 

Such  facts  as  these  show  how  deeply  concerned  the 
Genoese  adventurer  was  about  the  spiritual  results  of 
his   work.^ 

Nor  was  he  alone  in  this.  The  story  of  Cortez  and 
his  Mexican  career  reveals  similar  ideals  and  ambitions. 
Blood  and  iron  warrior  that  he  was,  he  never  forgot 
the  Faith. 

It  is  very  easy  to  ridicule  such  statements  and  gen- 
erally to  criticize  sixteenth  century  standards.  But 
it  is  unfair  so  to  do  without  wide  qualifications. 
Progress  does  not  mean  from  one  kind  of  thing  to 
another  kind,  but  rather  from  one  degree  to  another. 
By  which  is  meant  that  we  are  not  different  in  kind 
from  the  conquerors  of  Mexico,  but  only  in  degree. 
Further,  we  are  not  perfect  ourselves  and  twenty-fifth 
century  people,  if  the  Kingdom  does  not  come  before 
then,  will  probably  look  upon  the  deeds  of  our  heroes 
as  many  now  look  on  those  of  Cortez. 

Let  us  avoid  these  pitfalls  of  superficiality  and  think 
of  the  Spanish  heroes  in  terms  of  the  century  in  which 
they  lived,  and  let  us  take  Cortez  and  judge  him  on 
that  basis. 

With  the  little  army  with  which  he  invaded  Mexico, 
Cortez  was  scrupulously  careful  to  keep  always  a 
complement  of  priests.  Never  were  their  ministrations 
put  off  or  made  of  secondary  importance.  From  begin- 
ning to  end  the  Cross  went  side  by  side  with  the  banner 
in  his  army.  The  first  colony  he  established  he  named 
Vera  Cruz,  or  True  Cross.  These  facts  are  only 
illustrative  of  the  entire  tone  of  his  expedition. 

Nor  can  one  say  that  it  was  all  outward  and  without 
inward  significance.  In  his  acts  and  in  his  letters  the 
Conquistador  showed  time  and  time  again  that  he 
took  his  faith  seriously.  On  one  occasion,  for  ex- 
ample, he  risked  everything  rather  than   forego  the 

*  Compare  Payne,  History  of  the  New  World  Called  America,  I,  137 
ff.,  186  ff. 


18  THE  NEW  WORLD 

Church's  offices,  and  at  many  other  times  he  did  things 
which  he  need  not  have  done,  and  which  decreased 
his  chances  of  success,  in  order  to  pay  what  was  due 
to  the  God  in  whom  he  so  fervently  beheved. 

That  Cortez  had  an  appreciation  of  moral  values  and 
held  high  ideals  was  abundantly  proven  when  he  risked, 
on  one  occasion,  losing  the  imperial  favor  for  the 
sake  of  the  pure  Gospel.  The  following  from  a  letter 
written  to  the  Emperor  Charles  V  on  October  15, 
1524,  reveals  the  real  Cortez: 

Every  time  I  have  written  to  your  sacred  Majesty,  I  have 
mentioned  to  your  Highness  the  disposition  that  exists  in 
some  of  the  natives  of  these  parts  to  embrace  our  holy 
catholic  faith  and  become  Christians ;  and  I  have  begged  your 
imperial  Majesty  to  direct  that  religious  persons  of  good 
life  and  example  be  provided.  As  very  few,  or  almost  none, 
have  yet  come,  and  it  is  certain  that  they  would  gather 
much  fruit  from  their  labors,  I  again  call  the  attention  of 
your  Highness  to  the  subject,  and  beg  you  to  make  this 
provision  with  all  speed ;  for  by  this  means  God  our  Lord 
will  be  greatly  served,  and  the  desire  of  your  Highness  in 
this  case  as  a  good  Catholic  fulfilled.  By  the  deputies,  An- 
tonio de  Quinones  and  Alonso  Davila,  the  councils  of^  the 
towns  of  New  Spain  and  myself,  did  send  to  supplicate 
your  Majesty  to  supply  bishops  and  other  prelates  for  the 
administration  of  the  offices  of  the  church  and  divine  wor- 
ship, and  such  was  the  view  I  then  entertained  of  the  course 
best  to  be  pursued;  but  having  well  considered  this  matter, 
it  now  appears  to  me  that  your  sacred  Majesty  may  in  a 
different  manner  provide  for  the  more  easy  conversion  of 
the  natives  of  this  country,  and  their  instruction  in  the  prin- 
ciples of  our  holy  faith.  The  plan  I  would  recommend,  is, 
that  a  number  of  religious  persons  (or  priests),  as  I  have 
already  mentioned,  zealous  for  the  conversion  of  this  people, 
should  come  out,  for  whom  houses  and  monasteries  should 
be  erected  in  the  provinces  wherever  it  may  seem  proper; 
and  that  tithes  be  assigned  them  to  defray  the  expense  of 
building  their  houses,  and  for  their  support,  the  surplus  to  be 
applied  to  the  erection  and  ornamenting  of  the  churches  in 
the  villages  where  the  Spaniards  reside,  as  well  as  to  main- 
tain the  clergy  who  officiate  in  them.  Officers  appointed  by 
your   Majesty   should   collect   and   keep   an   account   of   the 


FOR  GOD,  FOR  GLORY,  AND  FOR  GOLD   19 

tithes,  and  with  them  supply  the  monasteries  and  churches; 
for  which  purpose  they  will  be  more  than  sufficient,  and  a 
balance  left  for  the  disposition  of  your  Majesty.  Let  your 
Majesty  petition  his  Holiness  (the  Pope)  to  grant  you  the 
tenths  of  these  parts  for  this  purpose,  giving  him  to  under- 
stand the  service  rendered  to  God  our  Lord  by  the  conver- 
sion of  this  people,  which  can  be  accomplished  in  no  other 
way;  for  if  bishops  and  other  prelates  are  sent,  they  will 
follow  the  custom  practised  by  them  for  our  sins  at  the 
present  day,  by  disposing  of  the  estates  of  the  church,  and 
expending  them  in  pageants  and  other  foolish  matters;  and 
bestowing  rights  of  inheritance  on  their  sons  or  relatives. 
A  still  greater  evil  would  result  from  this  state  of  things; 
the  natives  of  this  country  formerly  had  their  priests,  who 
were  engaged  in  conducting  the  rites  and  ceremonies  of  their 
religion;  and  so  strict  were  they  in  the  practice  of  honesty 
and  chastity,  that  any  deviation  therefrom  was  punished  with 
death;  now  if  they  saw  that  the  affairs  of  the  church  and 
what  related  to  the  service  of  God  were  entrusted  to  canons 
and  other  dignitaries,  and  if  they  understood  that  these  were 
the  ministers  of  God  whom  they  beheld  indulging  in  vicious 
habits  and  profaneness,  as  is  the  case  in  these  days  in  Spain, 
it  would  lead  them  to  undervalue  our  faith  and  treat  it  with 
derision,  and  all  the  preaching  in  the  world  would  not  be 
able  to  counteract  the  mischief  arising  from  this  source. 

As  the  conversion  of  this  people  is,  and  ought  to  be,  the 
principal  object  of  your  Majesty,  which  we  likewise  who 
reside  here  ought  as  Christians  to  keep  in  view,  and  sedulously 
endeavor  to  promote,  I  have  sought  to  counsel  your  imperial 
Majesty  in  regard  to  this  matter,  and  to  express  my  opinion 
respecting  it;  which  I  beg  your  Highness  to  receive  as  pro- 
ceeding from  one  of  your  subjects  and  vassals  who  exerts, 
and  will  still  continue  to  exert,  his  strength  in  extending 
the  realms  and  seignories  of  your  Majesty  throughout  this 
land,  and  in  making  known  your  royal  fame  and  great  power 
amongst  these  nations:  and  who  at  the  same  time  desires, 
and  will  labor  with  all  his  soul,  to  induce  your  Highness 
to  command  the  propagation  of  our  holy  faith,  as  the  means 
of  securing  happiness  in  eternal  life*  .   .   .1 

When  we  turn  from  the  fiery  conqueror  of  Mexico 
to  that  finest  of  all  the  Conquistadores,  Vasco  Nufiez 
de  Balboa,  we  find  another  noble  illustration  of  the 

*  Letters  of  Cortes,  edited  by  F.  A.  MacNutt,  pp.  213-215. 


20  THE   NEW   WORLD 

emphasis  placed  on  the  spread  of  God's  Kingdom  by 
the   Spanish  adventurers. 

The  story  of  Balboa's  first  vision  of  the  Pacific  has, 
so  far  as  literary  effect  is  concerned,  been  told  once 
and  for  all  by  Washington  Irving.  Here  is  his  ac- 
count : 

With  palpitating  heart,  he  ascended  alone  the  bare  mountain 
top.  On  reaching  the  summit,  the  long-desired  prospect  burst 
upon,  his  view.  It  was  as  if  a  new  world  were  unfolded  to 
him,  separated  from  all  hitherto  known  by  this  mighty  barrier 
of  mountains.  Below  him  extended  a  vast  chaos  of  rock 
and  forest,  and  green  savannas  and  wandering  streams,  while 
at  a  distance  the  waters  of  the  promised  ocean  glittered  in 
the  morning  sun. 

At  this  glorious  prospect  Vasco  Nufiez  sank  upon  his 
knees,  and  poured  out  thanks  to  God,  for  being  the  first 
European  to  whom  it  was  given  to  make  that  great  discovery. 
He  then  called  his  people  to  ascend:  "Behold,  my  friends," 
he  said,  "that  glorious  sight  which  we  have  so  much  desired. 
Let  us  give  thanks  to  God  that  he  has  granted  us  this  great 
honor  and  advantage.  Let  us  pray  to  Him  to  guide  and 
aid  us  to  conquer  the  sea  and  land  which  we  have  discovered, 
and  which  Christian  has  never  entered  to  preach  the  holy 
doctrine  of  the  Evangelists.  As  to  yourselves,  be  as  you  have 
hitherto  been,  faithful  and  true  to  me,  and  by  the  favor  of 
Christ  you  will  become  the  richest  Spaniards  that  have  ever 
come  to  the  Indies;  you  will  render  the  greatest  services  to 
your  king  that  ever  vassal  rendered  to  his  lord;  and  you  will 
have  the  eternal  glory  and  advantage  of  all  that  is  here  dis- 
covered, conquered,  and  converted  to  our  holy  Catholic  faith. 

The  Spaniards  answered  this  speech  by  embracing  Vasco 
Nunez,  and  promising  to  follow  him  to  death.  Among  them 
was  a  priest,  named  Andreas  de  Veram,  who  lifted  up  his 
voice  and  chanted  Te  Deum  Laudamus,  the  usual  anthem  of 
Spanish  discoverers.  The  rest,  kneeling  down,  joined  in  the 
strain  with  pious  enthusiasm  and  tears  of  joy;  and  never  did 
a  more  sincere  oblation  rise  to  the  Deity  from  a  sanctified 
altar,  than  from  that  mountain  summit.^ 

Only  a  short  while  ago  we  were  telling  with  pride 
how  an  Alaskan  missionary  made  the  heights  of  Mc- 

*  Irving,  Voyages  and  Discoveries  of  the  Companions  of  Columbus. 
Vasco  Nunez  de  Balboa.     Chap.   IX. 


FOR  GOD,  FOR  GLORY,  AND  FOR  GOLD   21 

Kinley  to  resound  with  Te  Deum  Laudamus.  With 
that  fresh  in  our  memories  is  it  not  inspiring  to  be 
reminded  of  Balboa  and  Veram,  and  to  know  that 
as  that  hymn  to  the  Trinity  was  the  first  song  sung 
on  the  summit  of  North  America,  even  so  when  first 
the  southern  sea,  the  wide  and  wonderful  Pacific,  was 
seen  by  Europeans,  its  waters  were  called  upon  to  echo 
the  Christians'  hymn  of  Faith. 

It  would  be  a  simple  matter  to  bring  out  many 
more  facts  illustrating  the  emphasis  laid  by  Cortez 
and  Balboa  and  all  the  Conquistadores  on  the  conver- 
sion of  the  aborigines.  Whether  in  Cuba  or  Mexico 
or  Central  or  South  America,  they  remind  us  of 
Charlemagne  and  his  contemporaries,  and  in  a  measure 
one  may  say  that  the  immediate  products  of  those 
*'sword  or  baptism"  conversions  in  the  old  and  new 
worlds  were  a  good  deal  alike.  The  conditions  of  the 
lands  in  which  the  things  were  done  were  so  totally 
different  though — as  we  shall  see  later  on — that  as  the 
years  went  by  differentiations  of  marked  character 
developed,  so  that  what  resemblances  at  first  appeared 
soon  ceased  to  exist. 

"For  God,"  then,  was  a  controlling  motive  with  the 
discoverers  and  conquerors.  For  God  they  began 
their  search  for  gold.  For  God  at  the  first  they  sub- 
jugated all  the  Indians  with  whom  they  came  in  con- 
tact. For  God  they  committed  in  the  beginning,  it 
must  be  confessed,  vast  and  horrible  crimes,  and  in 
the  name  of  the  Prince  of  Peace  they  made  war  where 
none  was  necessary. 

For  Glory 

Such  was  the  first  of  their  ideals.  And  then  there 
was  the  second, — for  glory.  Men  will  do  much  for 
glory.  The  pride  of  life  is  vigorous.  Few  are  in- 
sensible to  its  cajolery,  few  are  unmindful  of  the  pes- 


22  THE   NEW   WORLD 

sible  plaudits  of  the  multitude.  Tacitus,  two  thousand 
years  ago,  said  that  **the  desire  of  glory  clings  even 
to  the  best  men  longer  than  any  other  passion.'* 
Shakespeare  made  the  ''for  glory"  phase  one  of  the 
seven  in  the  life  of  men : 

Then,  a  soldier, 
Seeking   the    bubble    reputation 
Even  in  the  cannon's  mouth. 

Whether  it  represents  the  attitude  of  men  at  a  specific 
age  or  not,  does  not  concern  us  here.  What  does 
concern  us  is  that  from  the  college  youth  of  modem 
America  plunging  into  the  line  and  performing  feats 
before  full  stadia  which  he  would  not  do  in  practice, 
back  to  the  days  of  tribal  warfare,  the  gratification  of 
personal  vanity  and  the  applause  of  one's  friends  and 
neighbors  have  been  real  incentives  to  deeds  of  bravery. 

The  extent  to  which  the  Conquistadores  labored  for 
glory  is,  of  course,  indeterminable.  We  know  though 
that  as  a  result  of  their  centuries  of  warfare  with  the 
Moors  a  spirit  of  what  one  might  call  spectacular 
militarism  had  developed,  a  spirit  which  Cervantes 
parodied  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century.  One 
is  quite  safe,  therefore,  in  saying  that  no  estimate 
of  the  motives  of  the  Spanish  conquerors  should  leave 
out  a  reference  to  their  love  for  fanfaronade  and  the 
shoutings  of  the  multitude. 

Whether  this  spirit  was  baneful  or  not  need  not  be 
determined  here.  We  may  say,  at  least,  that  love  of 
adventure,  sheer  passion  for  excitement — for  crossing 
unknown  seas,  for  penetrating  mysterious  forests,  for 
subjugating  strange  peoples,  for  contending  with  the 
elements — that  love  for  these  things  is  capable  of  fine 
development.  It  might  be  added  that  such  an  incentive 
is  without  question  a  nobler  one  than  mere  love  for 
gold. 

The  pity  is  that  the  Spaniards  who  went  to  the 


FOR  GOD,  FOR  GLORY,  AND  FOR  GOLD        23 

Indies  did  not  retain  their  passion  for  Glory.  As  it 
was,  not  only  did  they  forget  that  they  had  come  out 
for  God,  but  they  even  forgot  the  Glory  that  was  to 
be  won.  In  the  fever  of  the  treasure  hunt  they  cast  off 
almost  every  worthy  impulse  and  like  bloodhounds 
with  nose  on  trail,  dashed  blindly  after  Gold.  Therein 
lies  the  appalling  tragedy  of  the  Conquest.  As  Las 
Casas  says,  the  ''execrable  sed  d'oro"  (execrable  thirst 
for  gold)  conquered  the  Conquistadores. 

For  Gold 

From  the  earliest  days  Europeans  had  thought  of 
the  unknown  lands  which  lay  to  the  east  of  Palestine 
as  places  from  which  great  wealth  m.ight  be  obtained. 
Throughout  the  thirteenth  century,  there  was  much 
rivalry  for  the  control  of  the  trade  with  the  orient,  and 
it  was  due  to  her  success  in  this  direction  that  Venice 
became  at  one  time  the  commercial  center  of  the  world. 
During  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries  it  was  the 
most  splendid  and  luxurious  city  in  all  Christendom, 
and  most  of  its  splendor  came  from  the  fact  that  it  was 
the  chief  port  through  which  the  costly  products  of 
India  and  China  were  obtained.  But  the  long  overland 
journey  to  the  eastern  end  of  the  Mediterranean  was 
arduous  and  costly,  and  for  a  great  many  years  mer- 
chants had  been  eager  to  find  some  other  way  of  tap- 
ping the  wealth  of  the  orient.  If  only  a  passage  for 
ships  could  be  found,  the  whole  matter  would  be  simpli- 
fied and  the  profits  of  the  traders  greatly  increased. 
Hence  it  came  to  pass  that  though  they  went  out  for 
God  and  for  Glory,  the  controlling  motive  in  the  ex- 
peditions of  the  Conquerors  was  a  material  one,  and  to 
this  fact  must  be  attributed  most  of  the  unhappy  his- 
tory of  the  early  days. 

It  has  been  often  pointed  out  that  the  difference 
between  the  settlers  in  Virginia  and  New  England,  and 


24  THE   NEW   WORLD 

those  who  went  to  the  Caribbean,  was  a  matter  of 
motive.  The  pilgrims,  on  their  part,  crossed  the  ocean 
that  they  might  find  a  place  where,  for  the  rest  of 
their  days,  they  could  worship  God  in  their  own  way. 
The  Spaniards,  seeking  a  short  cut  to  the  treasure 
houses  of  the  Indies,  regarded  the  lands  which  they 
found  in  a  totally  different  light.  And  it  takes  no 
stretch  of  the  imagination  to  see  that  the  latter  motive 
was  less  apt  to  produce  happy  results,  since  solid  and 
lasting  colonies  are  only  founded  by  those  who  go  in 
search  of  homes.  We  can  with  profit  compare  the 
Spaniards  with  the  gold-seekers  in  Alaska.  Those  who 
rushed  pell-mell  to  the  Klondike  were  not  seeking 
homes,  and  from  the  accounts  which  we  receive  of 
their  behavior  we  are  forced  to  believe  that  Alaska  in 
the  nineteenth  century  presented  many  situations  com- 
parable to  those  in  the  colonies  of  the  Spanish  Main. 
Is  there  not  a  large  moral  in  these  facts,  and  should 
we  not  be  grateful  that  our  ancestors  were  led  not  by 
tales  of  treasure  cities,  but  crossed  the  wide  Atlantic 
for  spiritual  rather  than  material  reasons? 

When  we  take  up  the  story  of  the  Spaniards'  search 
for  gold,  we  find  that  it  can  be  divided  into  two  dis- 
tinct parts.  In  the  first  place  there  were  the  more 
or  less  resultless  expeditions  of  Columbus  and  his 
companions ;  and  in  the  second  there  were  the  rich 
strikes  of  those  who  found  the  treasure  cities  of  the 
Aztecs  and  Incas.  Both  of  these  experiences  were 
unfortunate.  The  first  in  that  it  developed  a  vicious 
type  of  slavery.  The  second  in  that  it  resulted  in 
furious   and   exterminating   warfares. 

Take,  for  example,  the  experience  of  those  who  ex- 
plored the  Antilles.  The  native  Arawaks  whom  they 
found  in  the  islands  were  such  a  docile  people  that  it 
was  the  simplest  thing  in  the  world  to  make  slaves 
of  them,  and  the  result  was  inevitable.  Where  men 
have  to  work  with  their  own  hands  for  what  they  get, 


FOR  GOD,  FOR  GLORY,  AND  FOR  GOLD        25 

the  nobler  qualities  have  an  opportunity  to  survive, 
but  vv^here  they  can  sit  back  and  let  others  do  the  work, 
the  worst  passions  come  to  the  surface.  And  so  it 
came  to  pass  that  the  treasure-hunters  along  the  shores 
of  the  Caribbean  and  in  Hispaniola  soon  developed 
in  their  worst  form  all  the  vices  of  slave-drivers.  One 
cannot  better  picture  their  depravity  than  by  quoting 
directly  from  one  of  their  own  writers,  and,  parentheti- 
cally, it  should  never  be  forgotten  that  it  is  from  the 
Spaniards  themselves  that  we  receive  the  severest 
criticisms  of  the  Conquistadores.  Here,  for  example, 
is  what  Las  Casas  tells  us  of  certain  happenings  in 
Cuba:^ 

And  further,  my  Prince,  a  man  named  Hatuey,  who  had 
fled  with  many  of  his  people  from  Hispaniola  to  Cuba,  to 
escape  the  climate  and  inhuman  operations  of  the  Christians, 
having  received  news  from  some  Indians  that  the  Christians 
were  crossing  over,  assembled  many  or  all  of  his  people  and 
addressed  them  thus : 

"You  already  know  that  it  is  said  the  Christians  are  com- 
ing here;  and  you  have  experience  of  how  they  have  treated 
the  Lords  so-and-so  and  other  people  of  Hispaniola:  They 
come  to  do  the  same  thing  here.  Do  you  know  why  they 
do  it?"  The  people  answered  no,  except  that  they  were  by 
nature  cruel  and  wicked.  "They  do  it,"  said  he,  "not  only 
for  this  but  because  they  have  a  God  whom  they  greatly 
adore  and  love ;  and  to  make  us  adore  him  they  strive  to 
subjugate  us  and  take  our  lives."  He  had  near  him  a  basket 
full  of  gold  and  jewels,  and  he  said:  "At  hand  here  is  the 
god  of  the  Christians,  let  us  perform  Areytos  before  him, 
if  you  will  (these  were  dances  in  concert  and  singly)  ;  and 
perhaps  we  shall  please  him  and  he  will  command  them 
that  they  do  us  no  harm." 

All  exclaimed :  "It  is  well,  it  is  well !"  They  danced  before 
it  [the  basket  full  of  gold  and  jewels]  till  they  were  all 
tired,  after  which  the  Lord  Hatuey  said,  "Know  well  that 
in  any  event  if  we  preserve  the  gold,  they  will  finally  have  to 
kill  us  to  take  it  from  us;  let  us  throw  it  into  the  river." 
They  all  agreed  to  this  proposal,  and  threw  the  gold  into  the 
great  river  in  that  place. 

*  Quoted  from  the  Brevissima  RelaciSn  as  given  by  MacNutt,  Bar- 
tholomew de  Las  Casas,  p.   329. 


26  THE   NEW   WORLD 

One  only  has  to  read  the  pages  of  Las  Casas  to  see 
how  fearfully  the  Spaniards  behaved.  Even  though 
one  realize  that  in  his  zeal  he  overexaggerated  con- 
siderably, the  facts  are  not  altered,  since  so  great  was 
their  lust  that  the  Indians  whom  they  had  enslaved 
believed  gold  was  their  god. 

When  we  turn  to  the  experiences  of  those  who  dis- 
covered the  treasure  cities  of  the  Aztecs  and  Incas, 
we  find  a  similar  state  of  affairs.  It  was  the  ease  with 
which  they  enslaved  the  Indians  that  accounted  to  a 
great  extent  for  the  degeneration  of  the  first  group. 
This  second  group,  on  the  other  hand,  was  driven 
to  desperate  deeds  by  the  knowledge  that  the  aborigines 
had  anticipated  them,  and  already  held  in  fortified 
places  the  wealth  which  they  so  fiercely  coveted.  Once 
again  we  can  turn  to  the  Spanish  historian  for  an  ac- 
count of  what  happened.  Led  on  by  the  knowledge 
that  within  the  vaults  of  Montezuma's  palace  were  piles 
and  piles  of  gold  and  silver  the  followers  of  Cortez 
stopped  at  nothing.  With  equal  ferocity  did  other 
Spaniards  attack  the  peoples  in  Peru  and  Guatemala. 
Read,  for  example,  this  passage  taken  at  random  from 
the  Brevissima  Relacion:^ 

When  the  rulers  throughout  all  those  provinces  saw  that 
the  Spaniards  had  burnt  that  one  [a  certain  Cacique]  and 
all  those  chief  lords,  only  because  they  gave  them  no  gold, 
they  all  fled  from  their  towns  and  hid  in  the  mountains; 
they  commanded  all  their  people  to  go  to  the  Spaniards 
and  serve  them  as  their  lords,  but  that  they  should  not  reveal 
to  them  their  [the  rulers]  hiding-place. 

All  the  inhabitants  came  to  offer  themselves  to  his  [Pedro 
de  Alvarado's]  men  and  to  serve  them  as  their  lords.  This 
compassionate  captain  replied  that  he  would  not  receive  them; 
on  the  contrary  he  would  kill  them  all  if  they  did  not  disclose 
the  whereabouts  of  their  chiefs.  The  Indians  answered  that 
they  knew  nothing  about  them,  but  that  the  Spaniards  should 
make  use  of  them,  of  their  wives  and  children  whom  they 
would  find  in  their  houses,  where  they  could  kill  them  or 

»  Op.  cit.,  p.  353. 


FOR  GOD,  FOR  GLORY,  AND  FOR  GOLD   27 

do  with  them  what  they  wished.     This  the  Indians  declared 
and  offered  many  times. 

Stupefying  to  relate,  the  Spaniards  went  to  the  houses  where 
they  found  the  poor  people  working  in  safety  at  their  occupa- 
tions with  their  wives  and  children,  and  there  they  wounded 
them  with  lances  and  cut  them  to  pieces.  They  also  went 
to  a  quiet,  large  and  important  town  where  the  people  were 
ignorant  of  what  had  happened  to  the  others,  and  were  safe 
in  their  ignorance;  within  barely  two  hours  they  destroyed 
it,  putting  women,  children  and  the  aged  to  the  sword  and 
killing  all  who  did  not  save  themselves  by  flight. 

Thus,  because  they  had  heard  that  the  caciques,  in 
what  we  now  call  Central  America,  had  treasure-houses 
full  of  gold  and  silver  did  the  Spaniards  assail  them 
and  theirs.  The  same  comment  which  we  made  with 
regard  to  their  depredations  among  the  peaceful  Ara- 
waks  is  applicable  here.  Had  no  tales  of  wealth  al- 
ready accumulated  come  to  their  ears;  had  they  had 
to  work  with  their  own  hands  for  what  they  were  to 
obtain,  how  different  the  story  would  have  been. 

But  one  cannot  leave  the  matter  at  this  point  lest 
the  reader  imagine  that  it  was  because  they  were 
Spaniards  that  these  terrible  things  were  done.  Any 
such  conclusion  would  be  unfair,  and  one  may  assert 
this  the  more  confidently  since  there  has  been  made 
public  within  recent  years  the  story  of  the  Welser  ex- 
pedition to  Venezuela. 

Charles  V  had  become  deeply  indebted  to  certain 
Augsburg  bankers  by  the  name  of  Welser.  For  some 
years  that  house  had  been  established  in  Spain  and 
had  been  pressing  its  imperial  debtor  for  a  right  to 
do  some  exploring  in  the  Indies.  The  Emperor  realized 
that  if  any  commercial  company  were  to  receive  an 
exploration  concession  it  had  best  be  this  one,  so  after 
much  negotiation  a  bargain  was  struck.  Heinrich 
Ehinger  and  Heironymus  Sailer,  with  whom  the  house 
of  Welser  had  been  united,  were  given  an  exclusive 
right  to  explore  and  settle  that  part  of  the  coast  of 


28  THE   NEW   WORLD 

South  America  which  lay  between  Cape  Maracapana 
and  Cape  de  la  Vela — which  means  practically  Vene- 
zuela of  today.  With  the  provisions  of  the  grant  we 
have  no  concern  here.  In  the  conduct  of  the  conces- 
sionaries, however,  we  are  much  interested  since  it 
throws  considerable  light  upon  the  subject. 

The  Germans  went  across  the  South  Atlantic  for 
business  purposes  only.  They  received  their  charter 
and  commenced  operations  without  making  any  plans 
for  the  spread  of  the  Gospel.  That  there  was  a  great 
opportunity  for  missionary  work  never  occurred  to 
them,  and  the  records  show,  as  Professor  Moses  brings 
out,  that  *'they  had  apparently  less  regard  for  the  na- 
tives than  even  the  Spaniards,  and  a  consideration  of 
their  treatment  of  the  Indians  will  help  to  modify  the 
views  that  cruelties  equal  to  those  practised  by  the 
Spaniards  would  not  have  appeared  if  any  other  na- 
tion had  been  put  in  the  place  of  Spain."  ^ 

Las  Casas,  of  whom  more  later,  thus  speaks  of  this 
Welser  company.  ''Their  one  object  was  to  get  the 
gold  out  of  the  country  at  whatever  cost.  They  em- 
ployed means  so  odious  that  the  Spaniards  seemed 
gentle  beside  these  new  prospectors ;  they  surpassed 
tigers  in  ferocity,  and  recognized  neither  God  nor  King 
nor  common  humanity."  It  should  be  added  that  Las 
Casas  had  no  grudge  against  the  Germans.^ 

In  conclusion,  it  should  be  said  that  the  Conqulsta- 
dores  were  encouraged  in  their  lust  for  gold  by  the 
court  and  nobles  of  Spain.    As  will  be  shown  later  on, 

1  Moses,  The  Spanish  Dependencies  in  South  America,  I,  p,   65. 

2  For  further  testimony  that  others  besides  the  Spaniards  did  not 
behave  in  an  exemplary  way  in  the  Indies,  see  Bullard,  Panama, 
Ch.  XX.  Under  the  title,  "The  Presbyterian  Invasion,"  he  narrates 
the  story  of  the  endeavor  made  by  Chiesly  and  Paterson,  two  Scotch- 
men, to  break  into  the  gold  fields  of  the  Indies.  The  colony  which 
they  founded  on  the  San  Bias  Coast  had  a  short  and  checkered  career, 
and  the  behavior  of  the  Scotchmen  was  anything  but  satisfactory. 
Other  descriptions  of  the  enterprise  will  be  found  in  Anderson,  Old 
Panama  and  Castilla  del  Oro,  Ch.  XXIV,  and  Barbour,  The  History  of 
William  Paterson  aind  the  Darien  Company. 


FOR  GOD,  FOR  GLORY,  AND  FOR  GOLD        29 

the  Spanish  monarchs  were  singnlarly  lacking  in  eco- 
nomic sense.  About  the  only  thing  that  they  knew 
how  to  do  well  was  to  fight.  Wars  seem  to  have  been 
the  be-all  and  the  end-all  of  those  in  power.  Nor, 
when-  we  remember  the  centuries  in  which  they  had  to 
fight  the  Moors,  can  we  be  very  much  surprised. 

It  was  inevitable  that  kings  like  Charles  V  and  Philip 
II  who  were  trying  to  dominate  Europe  should  need 
vast  quantities  of  money.  And  moreover,  seeing  that 
this  money  was  to  be  used  for  military  expeditions, 
the  most  unproductive  of  all  occupations,  it  was  equally 
inevitable  that  the  resultant  estimate  of  its  value 
would  be  highly  unscientific.  We  cannot  discuss  here 
the  economic  significance  of  wealth,  but  we  must  at 
least  say  that  only  where  it  is  desired  or  valued  for 
what  it  can  produce,  does  it  come  as  a  blessing  to  Its 
possessor.  Where  gold  and  silver  are  wanted  for  the 
sinews  of  war,  and  for  nothing  else,  their  real  value 
is  entirely  lost  sight  of.  We  must  picture  to  our- 
selves, then,  a  Court  in  Spain  ever  clamoring  for 
more  and  more  gold.  Only  as  we  realize  this  and  the 
atmosphere  which  it  created  can  we  understand  that 
before  ever  the  Conquerors  boarded  their  ships,  their 
conception  of  the  value  of  that  which  they  were  to 
seek  was  hopelessly  awry. 

Read  the  laws  laid  down  by  the  Casa  de  Contrata- 
cion,  for  example.^  Therein  we  see  that  the  king 
valued  his  new  possessions  only  for  the  ducats  they 
would  bring  him.  No  loophole  was  left  through  which 
his  proportion  of  all  that  was  sent  back  to  Spain 
could  escape.  Only  vessels  holding  the  imperial  li- 
cense could  go  to  the  Indies.  No  one  could  go  on 
board  those  vessels  without  a  special  permit.  No  one 
could  build  or  repair  vessels  engaged  in  the  trade 
without  special  license.     No  one  could  go  to  any  port 

*  A  good  account  of  these  will  be  found  in  Moses,  The  Spanish 
Dependencies  in  South  America,  I,  Ch.  XIV. 


30  THE   NEW   WORLD 

save  the  exact  one  stated  on  his  permit  to  sail.  To 
take  on  board  a  passenger  not  licensed  to  go,  or  to 
set  anybody  on  shore  at  any  place  except  the  one 
specified,  entailed  a  fine  of  a  thousand  ducats.  As 
we  read  of  these  regulations,  we  marvel  at  their  com- 
pleteness, but  we  also  groan  in  spirit,  since  they  reveal 
a  situation  of  such  a  character  as  would  have  led  the 
Indians  of  Cuba  to  report  to  their  friends  that  even 
the  King  of  Spain  made  gold  his  God. 

Such  was  the  Spaniard's  lust  for  gold.  And  thus 
were  the  Conquerors  conquered.  Can  we  refrain 
from  moralizing?  That  men  who  were  so  brave  and 
so  indomitable,  who  were  able  to  overcome  fatigue  and 
disease,  and  all  the  terrors  of  unknown  lands  and 
seas,  that  men  who  carried  with  them  the  Cross  of  the 
crucified  Christ  and  preached  Him  to  the  natives — 
that  men  who  exhibited  such  splendid  daring,  should 
in  the  end  have  fallen  a  prey  to  their  own  avarice  is 
a  fact  which  should  make  us  pause.  And  more  par- 
ticularly is  the  story  of  value  to  us,  since  our  own 
land  holds  out  temptations  similar  to  those  to  which 
the  Spaniards  yielded.  We  in  the  United  States  are 
laboring  for  God,  for  glory,  and  for  gold.  To  what 
extent  have  we  allowed  the  lust  for  riches  to  stultify 
our  other  and  better  desires?  Of  one  thing  we  can 
be  certain,  and  that  is,  that  the  same  fate  which  over- 
took the  Conqulstadores  will  overtake  us  if  we,  In  the 
heat  of  the  pursuit,  forget  life's  real  values  and  fall 
down  and  worship  the  golden  image. 


CHAPTER    II 
CONQUISTADORES    OF   THE   CROSS 

The  early  days  of  missionary  effort  in  Latin  Amer- 
ica were  filled  with  heroism  and  splendor.  If  we  of 
to-day  only  emulate  the  self-sacrifice  and  courage  of 
the  first  preachers  of  Light,  we  shall  do  well.  Our 
ideals,  the  prayers  we  offer  for  downtrodden  peons 
and  unevangelized  Indians,  the  hopes  we  have  for 
building  up  the  peoples  of  the  great  southern  lands, 
are  no  new  things.  Before  any  modern  ambassador 
went  forth  to  tell  the  North  American  aborigines  of 
their  Saviour,  and  before  what  we  call  modern  mis- 
sions were  dreamed  of,  the  Dominican  and  Francis- 
can friars  and  the  Society  of  Jesus  inaugurated  and 
carried  out  in  Latin  America  a  campaign  which  for 
courage  and  self-sacrifice  equals  anything  the  world 
has  ever  seen.  In  many  ways,  the  heroism  of  the 
Jesuits  in  the  Canadas  reminds  us  of  the  earlier  deeds 
of  the  same  order  in  South  America  and  of  followers 
of  St.  Francis  and  of  St.  Dominic  in  many  parts  of 
Latin  America. 

It  was  in  the  summer  of  1496  that  the  first  perma- 
nent city  of  the  new  world  was  founded.  On  his 
first  journey  Columbus  had  established  the  little  settle- 
ment of  Isabella  on  the  northwest  coast  of  the  island 
of  Hispaniola,  but  on  his  revisiting  the  spot  on  his 
second  voyage,  he  found  that  the  entire  colony  had 
been  wiped  out.  It  was  Bartholomew  Columbus,  a 
brother  of   Christopher,   who   founded   the   first   city 

31 


32  THE   NEW   WORLD 

which  was  to  last.  The  spot  chosen  by  him  was  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Ozema  River,  which  river  empties 
into  the  Caribbean  near  the  southeast  corner  of  what 
we  now  call  Santo  Domingo.  There  was  founded  Santo 
Domingo  City,  and  there  is  stands  today,  and  what  is 
of  special  interest  to  us,  there  also  still  stand  the 
walls  of  a  church — San  Nicolo — which  was  the  first 
stone  church  to  be  built  in  the  Americas. 

It  is  worth  while  remembering  that  the  first  bishopric 
in  the  western  world  was  established  in  that  its  oldest 
city,  and  that  the  people  are  using  at  this  present  mo- 
ment as  their  cathedral — San  Francisco — the  edifice 
which  was  put  up  between  1514  and  1540  by  Ales- 
sandro  Giraldini,  the  first  bishop.  Most  interesting 
of  all  is  the  fact  that  within  this  cathedral  lie  the 
remains  of  Columbus.  In  1765  the  supposed  remains 
were  removed  to  Havana,  but  in  1877,  while  repairs 
were  being  made,  a  casket  was  found  whereon  was  the 
inscription,  ''Discoverer  of  America,  First  Admiral 
and  Illustrious  and  Famous  Don  Christobal  Colon." 
Subsequent  investigation  has,  as  far  as  is  humanly 
possible,  demonstrated  that  in  this  casket  really  repose 
the  bones  of  Columbus.  How  profoundly  appro- 
priate it  is  that  the  first  of  the  Conquistadores  should 
rest  in  the  oldest  cathedral  building  in  the  Americas. 

Though  it  was  the  Franciscan  Order  which  built 
the  first  church,  it  is  to  the  Dominicans  that  credit  must 
be  given  for  taking  the  first  steps  toward  improving 
the  condition  of  the  aborigine.  They  were  the  first 
to  speak  in  behalf  of  his  liberty,  of  his  dignity  as  a 
reasonable  being  endowed  with  freewill  and  under- 
standing. "Associated  in  the  popular  conception  with 
the  foundation  and  extension  of  the  Inquisition,"  says 
Mr.  MacNutt  in  his  life  of  Las  Casas,  "the  Domini- 
cans may  appear  in  a  somewhat  unfamiliar  guise  as 
torchbearers  of  freedom  in  the  vanguard  of  Spanish 
colonial  expansion  in  America,  but  such  was  the  fact. 


CONQUISTADORES  OF  THE  CROSS  33 

History  has  made  but  scant  and  infrequent  mention  of 
these  first  obscure  heroes,  who  faced  obloquy  and 
even  risked  starvation  in  the  midst  of  irate  colonists, 
whose  avarice  and  brutality  they  fearlessly  rebuked 
in  the  name  of  religion  and  humanity;  they  sank, 
after  lives  of  self-immolation,  into  nameless  graves, 
sometimes  falling  victims  to  the  blind  violence  of  the 
very  Indians  whose  cause  they  championed — proto- 
martyrs  of  liberty  in  the  new  world." 

No  study  of  Latin-American  missions  should  over- 
look these  things ;  and  in  particular  no  student  should 
be  ignorant  of  the  career  of  the  great  Dominican, 
Bartholomew  de  Las  Casas,  the  leader  in  this  move- 
ment, the  man  who  by  his  daring  and  downright  self- 
sacrifice  stands  forth  as  the  father  of  missions  to 
Indians  and  the  inaugurator  of  that  campaign  against 
slavery  which  is  only  now  approaching  its  conclusion. 
What  Wilberforce  was  to  England  three  hundred 
years  later,  Las  Casas  was  to  the  New  World  in  the 
sixteenth  century.  Sad  to  say,  though,  the  ears  of 
the  sixteenth  century  were  closed  to  words  which 
found  a  hearing  in  the  nineteenth.  That,  however, 
does  not  cloud  the  issue ;  rather  does  it  the  more  make 
us  marvel  at  the  insight  of  that  Friar-Bishop  who  was 
so  far  ahead  of ^ his  time. 

Probably  the  best  way  to  tell  of  both  the  Friars 
and  Las  Casas  is  to  sketch  the  life  of  the  latter, 
since  as  it  proceeds  one  becomes  acquainted  in  a  gen- 
eral way  with  the  former. 

Born  of  a  noble  family  in  Seville,  in  1474,  Bar- 
tholomew de  Las  Casas  grew  up  imbued  with  all  the 
traditions  of  the  typical  Don.  Of  his  earlier  years 
we  need  not  speak ;  they  were  similar  in  every  re- 
spect to  those  of  his  contemporaries.  No  stories  are 
told  of  any  youthful  precocity  nor  of  prophecies  by 
admiring  parents  of  a  career  of  splendor. 

The  first  incident  of  importance  is  what  we  might 


34  THE  NEW  WORLD 

call  antiprophetical.  His  father,  who  had  accompanied 
Columbus  on  his  second  voyage  to  the  new  world, 
brought  home  from  the  Indies  as  a  present  to  his 
son,  then  a  student  at  Salamanca,  an  Indian  slave. 
Thus  curiously,  he  who  spent  his  later  years  laboring 
to  extinguish  slavery,  first  comes  before  us  as  a 
slaveholder.  This  fact  also  brought  him  to  the  notice 
of  the  world  at  large,  since  Isabella  had  issued  an  order 
prohibiting  Spaniards  from  holding  Indians  as  slaves ; 
hence  young  Las  Casas  was  brought  by  his  father's 
act  under  the  displeasure  of  his  sovereign.  Consider- 
ing that  his  later  years  were  spent  petitioning  Spanish 
royalty  to  abolish  servitude,  this  contretemps  is  almost 
humorous. 

After  leaving  Salamanca  and  its  daily  drills  in 
grammar,  logic,  metaphysics  and  Latin,  Las  Casas 
joined  the  group  which  followed  spellbound  the  he- 
roes who  had  returned  from  the  Indies.  So  thrilled 
did  he  become  that  when  Columbus  called  for  volun- 
teers for  his  third  expedition,  young  Las  Casas  was 
one  of  the  first  to  enlist.  Another  young  man  who 
did  the  same  thing  was  the  soon-to-be  renowned 
Fernandez  Cortez.  After  all  the  formalities  incident 
to  such  an  undertaking  had  been  completed,  and  with 
dreams  of  wealth  beyond  measure  about  to  be  won, 
and  with  no  thought  in  the  mind  of  our  hero  save 
that  of  worldly  profit,  the  expedition  sailed  on  the 
13th  of  February,   1502. 

On  arriving  in  Hispaniola  (Haiti),  Las  Casas  un- 
dertook at  once  the  management  of  those  properties 
of  which  his  father  had  become  possessed  on  the 
earlier  journey.  Never  dreaming  that  it  was  not  quite 
proper,  he  bought  more  slaves,  worked  them  hard  in 
the  mines,  and  generally  surrendered  himself  to  the 
acquisition  of  wealth.  He  was  neither  better  nor  worse 
than  his  fellows.  His  affairs  prospered  so  that,  ac- 
cording to  his  own  statement,  his  yearly  income  grew 


BARTHOLOMEW    DE    LAS    CASAS,    FROM    A     PORTRAIT 


CONQUISTADORES  OF  THE  CROSS  35 

until  it  amounted  to  100,000  castellanos — an  amazing 
sum,  his  biographer  asserts. 

And  now  we  must  digress  for  a  moment,  and  ex- 
amine the  conditions  under  which  Las  Casas  and  his 
contemporaries  held  slaves. 

Unfortunately,  on  the  shoulders  of  the  great  Co- 
lumbus must  rest  the  guilt  of  the  repartimiento  sys- 
tem for  handling  the  natives — of  which  more  in  a 
moment.  His  character  has  already  been  discussed; 
here  we  are  concerned  only  with  certain  of  his  acts 
— namely,  his  arrangements  whereby  slavery,  which 
had  been  forbidden  by  the  kind-hearted  Isabella,  was 
introduced  and  made  permanent  in  the  Indies — under 
an  assumed  name,  we  might  almost  say. 

Hostilities  between  the  natives  and  the  Spaniards 
had  been  constant,  and  Columbus,  the  Captain-General, 
after  that  the  Spaniards  had  gained  the  upper  hand 
sufficiently,  laid  a  tribute  upon  the  entire  population 
of  Hispaniola,  which  required  that  each  native  above 
fourteen  who  lived  in  mining  districts  should  pay  a 
little  bell  filled  with  gold  every  three  months,  while 
those  of  the  other  provinces  should  pay  an  arroba  of 
cotton  each.  Repeated  failures  to  collect  these  amounts 
showed  the  Governor  that  some  other  system  must 
be  devised,  and  accordingly  instead  of  money  the  In- 
dians were  compelled  to  pay  their  tribute  in  labor — 
just  exactly  as  in  certain  of  our  states  a  man  has  either 
to  pay  so  much  "road  tax"  a  year,  or  work  on  the 
roads  for  a  length  of  time  the  payment  for  which 
labor  would  be  equivalent  to  the  sum  demanded. 
No  doubt  these  regulations  were  well  meant,  but  two 
years  had  not  elapsed  before  men  had  forgotten  about 
the  bell  full  of  gold  and  the  arroba  of  cotton,  and  the 
alternative  of  personal  service  was  regularly  de- 
manded of  the  Indians,  sometimes  of  entire  villages. 
Soon,  as  a  result  of  these  demands  being  met,  the 
island  was  divided  into  repartimientos  or  shares.  That 


Z6  THE   NEW   WORLD 

is  to  say,  one  or  more  villages  would  be  put  under  the 
direction  of  their  native  caciques  (pronounced  ka- 
seeks  or  katheeks)  to  work  the  soil  for  certain  Span- 
iards, and  such  village  or  villages  would  constitute  the 
repartimiento  of  the  people  to  whom  it  was  given. 
Thus  the  natives  were  placed  in  a  condition  resem- 
bling, as  has  been  pointed  out,  that  of  feudal  villen- 
age.  This  was  the  state  of  affairs  when  the  governor- 
ship of  Columbus  came  to  its  abrupt  ending.  The 
seeds  of  the  most  cruel  slavery  the  western  world  has 
ever  seen  had  been  sown. 

It  was  under  the  later  governorship  of  the  notorious 
Ovando  that  the  system  developed  to  the  cruel 
extremes  of  the  encomienda  which  called  forth  the 
denunciation  of  Las  Casas  and  the  Friars.  The  re- 
partimiento arrangement  was  bad  enough,  but  the 
encomienda  device  resulted  in  slavery  of  the  deepest 
dye. 

Mr.  Fiske  thus  describes  the  encomienda: 

The  way  in  which  Ovando  carried  out  the  order  about 
missionary  work  was  characteristic.  As  a  member  of  a  re- 
ligious order  of  knights,  he  was  famiHar  with  the  practice  of 
encomienda,  by  which  groups  of  novices  were  assigned  to 
certain  preceptors  to  be  discipHned  and  instructed  in  the 
mysteries  of  the  order.  The  word  encomienda  means  ''com- 
mandery"  or  "preceptory,"  and  so  it  came  to  be  a  nice 
euphemism  for  a  hateful  thing.  Ovando  distributed  Indians 
among  the  Spaniards  in  lots  of  50  or  100  or  500,  with  a  deed 
worded  thus :  "To  you,  such  a  one,  is  given  an  encomienda 
of  so  many  Indians,  and  you  are  to  teach  them  the  things 
of  our  holy  Catholic  Faith."  In  practice  the  last  clause  was 
regarded  as  a  mere  formality,  and  the  effect  of  the  deed  was 
simply  to  consign  a  parcel  of  Indians  to  the  tender  mercies 
of  some  Spaniard  to  do  as  he  pleased  with  them.  If  the 
system  of  repartimientos  was  in  effect  serfdom  or  villenage, 
^he  system  of  encomiendas  was  unmitigated  slavery. 


On  hearing  the  word  slavery  coupled  with  the  word 
Indian  one  is  immediately  tempted  to  ask  whether  some 


CONQUISTADORES  OF  THE  CROSS  Zl 

mistake  has  not  been  made.  Indians — slaves !  Im- 
possible! They  would  die  sooner  than  submit  to 
shackles.  This  only  serves  to  show  that  if  one  is  to 
understand  the  Latin-American  problem,  he  must  be- 
come acquainted  with  the  difference  between  the  abori- 
gines of  Latin  America  and  those  of  North  America. 

With  the  exception  of  tribes  like  the  Aztecs  on  the 
Mexican  plateau  and  the  Incas  on  the  slopes  of  the 
Andes  and  the  Caribs  on  the  shores  of  the  Caribbean, 
many  of  the  southern  natives,  specially  those  on  the 
Islands — the  Arawaks — were  a  mild,  simple  folk,  of 
quite  a  different  nature  from  their  vigorous  northern 
neighbors.  Though  when  driven  by  the  cruelties  of 
their  enemies  they  retaliated  with  fiendish  vim  and 
made  many  a  Spaniard  pale  at  the  thought  of  falling 
into  their  hands,  the  explorers  almost  invariably  found 
the  Arawaks  to  be  friendly  at  the  start,  good-natured, 
willing  to  live  and  let  live.  This  fact  is  of  vast  social 
significance.  It  explains  to  a  large  extent  the  economic 
systems  which  grew  up  in  Latin  America.  It  shows 
us  why  so  much  firmer  political  foundations  were  laid 
in  New  England  than  in  Hispaniola.  One  is  inclined 
to  wonder  whether  the  Puritans  would  not  have  made 
use  of  such  docile  creatures  had  they  found  them  in 
the  wilds  of  New  England,  and  would  not  have  suffered 
in  the  same  way  from  the  experience.  For  after  all, 
it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  the  Spaniards  were 
terribly  tempted  by  the  comparative  ease  with  which 
they  could  enslave  the  red  men.  Imagine  an  Iroquois 
submitting  to  bonds !  And  imagine  the  people  who 
had  to  protect  themselves  from  the  Iroquois  becom- 
ing indolent! 

Probably  the  explanation  of  the  fact  that  all  in  all 
the  southern  aborigines  were  mild  and  docile  com- 
pared to  their  northern  cousins  is  to  be  found  in  the 
difference  between  their  natural  surroundings.  In 
the  north,  food  and  game  had  to  be  sought  out,  and  in 


38  THE   NEW   WORLD 

doing  so  conflicts  between  the  tribes  were  inevitable. 
In  the  south,  on  the  other  hand,  nature  was  so  prodigal 
that  there  was  no  need  for  hunting  expeditions  and 
the  like, — there  was  food  enough  for  all.  Then  too 
the  regions  where  game  was  to  be  found  were  limited 
in  the  north  so  that  the  Indians  had  to  fight  to  be  kept 
from  being  driven  to  less  favorable  ranges.  Lastly, 
and  of  this  matter  we  shall  have  more  to  say  later, 
the  warmth  of  the  sun  and  the  generosity  of  nature 
begat  indolence,  and  indolence  ever  begets  a  type  of 
peacefulness. 

The  tribal  arrangement  of  these  peoples  at  the  time 
of  the  conquest  was  quite  highly  developed  in  Mexico 
and  Central  America  and  among  the  Incas  of  what  we 
now  call  Peru.  Among  the  lesser  tribes,  those  who 
dwelt  in  the  Islands  of  the  Caribbean  Sea — the  Caribs 
and  the  Arawaks — on  the  other  hand  things  were 
more  simple.  Generally  speaking,  of  this  latter  class 
we  can  say,  that  the  same  type  of  clan  and  tribal  or- 
ganization obtained  among  them  as  was  found  among 
the  North  American  Indians.  The  leader  of  the  tribe 
was  termed  the  cacique  and  under  him  were  those  who 
by  might  had  won  positions  of  responsibility.  If  any- 
thing the  leaders  of  the  southern  aborigines  were  a 
bit  more  autocratic  than  were  the  sachems  and  chiefs 
in  the  colder  climes.  Perhaps  this  was  due  to  the 
different  economic  conditions  under  which  they  lived. 
The  northerners  were  nomadic,  the  southerners  had 
fixed  abodes. 

As  to  the  highly  developed  organization  of  the  Aztecs 
and  Incas,  among  them  a  thoroughgoing  monarchical 
system  prevailed.  The  Emperor  Montezuma,  against 
whom  Cortez  fought,  enjoyed  all  the  pomp  and  regalia 
of  royalty.  His  palace  was  a  place  of  wonder  and  his 
armies  highly  trained.  To  him  subject  kings  made 
obeisance.  To  an  even  greater  extent  the  royal  Incas 
reigned  in  splendor  in  the  midst  of  admiring  and  ador- 


CONQUISTADORES  OF  THE  CROSS  39 

ing  subjects.  In  many  ways  the  Inca  emperors  re- 
mind one  of  the  rulers  of  the  Sunrise  Kingdom.  The 
people  bowed  down  before  them  even  as  they  did  be- 
fore the  sacred  Mikado.  Nay  it  is  to  be  doubted 
whether  in  Japan  even  the  reverence  for  their  rulers 
quite  equalled  that  of  the  ancient  Peruvian  for  his 
Inca.  It  is  told  that  when  two  men  met  in  a  road 
which  led  to  the  royal  city  of  Cuzco,  the  one  approach- 
ing the  city  always  had  to  give  the  right  of  way  to 
him  who  had  come  from  it,  since  the  latter  having 
come  from  the  precincts  of  the  Emperor's  palace  had 
for  the  moment  been  invested  with  a  kind  of  sanctity. 

So  far  as  we  are  concerned  the  special  interest  in 
the  government  of  the  southern  aborigines  lies  in  this 
— that  the  missionaries  almost  always  took  advantage 
of  the  fact  that  the  Cacique  or  Emperor  or  Inca  was 
an  autocrat,  and  worked  on  and  through  them.  The 
history  of  the  early  missions  reveals  the  friars  ever 
seeking  out  those  in  authority  first,  and  when  once 
they  were  converted,  using  them  and  their  influence 
to  convert  their  followers  en  bloc.  This  fact  is  signifi- 
cant. The  splendid  results  which  we  have  had  among 
the  North  American  Indians  could  hardly  have  been 
achieved  if  our  workers  had  followed  this  plan.  Per- 
sonal conversion  and  indifference  to  rank  is  always 
the  wisest  policy. 

Those  whose  minds  delight  in  the  problem  of  race 
origins  will  be  anxious  to  go  still  farther  back  and 
inquire  into  the  origin  of  the  natives  in  the  lower 
latitudes.  Who  were  they?  Whence  did  they  come? 
How  came  they  to  be  dwelling  in  the  western  hemi- 
sphere? We  can  safely  follow  Fiske  in  saying  that  the 
legends  about  their  origin  which  held  sway  a  century, 
or  a  half  century  for  that  matter,  ago,  are  not  based 
on  fact.  And  yet  the  point  made  in  these  legends,  that 
the  North  American  aborigines  came  over  from  Asia, 
is  almost  certainly  correct.    The  scientist  differs  from 


40  THE   NEW   WORLD 

the  legend-maker  only  in  the  matter  of  how  they  came 
over.  All  agree  that  from  the  beginning  the  Americas 
were  populated,  as  they  are  being  populated  to-day,  by 
immigrants. 

*'In  all  probability,"  says  Mr.  Fiske,  "the  first  im- 
migrant came  from  the  old  world  at  some  ancient 
period,  whether  preglacial  or  postglacial,  when  it  was 
possible  to  come  by  land ;  and  here,  in  all  probability,  he 
remained  undisturbed  by  later  comers,  unless  the  Eski- 
mos were  such.  There  is  not  a  particle  of  evidence 
to  suggest  any  connection  or  intercourse  between 
aboriginal  America  and  Asia  within  .any  such  period 
as  the  last  20,000  years,  except  in  so  far  as  there  may 
perhaps  now  and  then  have  been  slight  surges  of 
Eskimo  tribes  back  and  forth  across  Bering  Strait."  ^ 

We  next  ask  about  the  religion  of  these  folk.  What 
was  the  Cross  to  displace?  And  to  that  question  the 
answers  would  be  too  numerous  to  put  down.  Some 
worshiped  one  deity  and  some  another,  and  some  had 
one  type  of  crude  ceremonial  and  some  another.  In 
fact,  all  the  various  forms  of  animism  and  fetishism 
were  prevalent.  Noted  instances  of  advanced  religious 
thought,  of  course,  were  found.  The  original  Mexi- 
cans had  evolved  a  creed  which  for  sublimity  was  as- 
tonishing. In  many  ways  it  suggested  the  truths  re- 
vealed by  our  Lord.  Notably  in  the  case  of  the  belief 
in  the  Fair  God,  Quetzalcotl  who,  as  their  beautiful 
legend  puts  it,  driven  from  the  land  by  the  wickedness 
of  man,  had  promised  to  return  bringing  peace  and 
purity — a  veritable  Kingdom  of  God*  on  earth. ^ 

Again,  the  faith  of  the  Incas  in  Peru  was  noble 
and  lofty.  All  in  all  the  Inca  "civilization,"  to  do 
what  Mr.  Fiske  calls  violence  to  that  word,  presents 

*  For  an  extensive  examinaticxn  of  this  see  Payne,  History  of  the  Neiv 
World ^  Called  America,   II,   64  ff. 

'  This  story  will  be  found  in  semi-juvenile  form  in  Henty's  By  Right 
of  Conquest.  Payne's  account  in  The  History  of  the  Nezv  World  Called 
America  should  be  read  by  all  who  desire  to  go  into  it  seriously. 


CONQUISTADORES  OF  THE  CROSS  41 

the  most  fascinating  of  anthropological  problems. 
Their  primitive  culture  was  so  highly  developed,  their 
religion  so  comparatively  pure  and  philosophical,  that 
save  in  the  case  of  the  creed  promulgated  by  Aknaton 
in  Egypt  some  4,000  years  B.C.,  the  v^^orld  has  seldom 
seen  its  equal.  Such  premonitions  of  the  Truth  as  they 
displayed  make  us  marvel.^ 

Aside  from  these  two  advanced  forms,  the  religion 
of  the  American  aborigines  was,  as  has  been  said,  crude 
and  simple.  Folk  lore  and  legends,  medicine  men  and 
fetishes,  superstitions  and  fears  of  evil  spirits — such 
made  up  the  faith  of  the  children  of  the  wilderness 
to  whom  the  Friars  went  with  the  Gospel. 

Parenthetically  it  might  be  added  that  there  are  still 
tens  of  thousands  of  their  kind  in  Latin  America 
today.  One  of  our  best  known  travelers  stated  re- 
cently that  though  rumor  had  it  that  there  w^ere  some 
500,000  unevangelized  savages  in  Central  America, 
he  was  certain  that  1,500,000  would  be  a  truer  es- 
timate. 

To  such  peoples  it  was  that  the  missionaries  went, 
and,  if  enough  has  been  said  to  show  how  much  they 
differed  from  their  northern  neighbors  it  will  be 
realized  that  the  problems  involved  in  the  conversion 
of  the  two  peoples  were  fundamentally  different.  In 
the  one  case  it  was  a  question  of  converting  one  by 
one  a  fierce  and  nomadic  people;  in  the  other  it  was 
a  matter  of  diplomacy — of  winning  over  a  cacique 
— which  done,  the  rest  followed  with  comparative  ease. 
But  let  us  return  to  Las  Casas,  that  we  may  learn  from 
his  life  how  first  the  Gospel  of  Liberty  was  preached 
to  these  southern  savages. 

We  left  him  at  the  beginning  of  his  career  as  a 
planter  and   slave  owner  in  Hispaniola.     Rich  and 

*  For  a  succinct  summing  up  of  all  the  world's  premonitions  of 
Christianity,  though  not  written  from  a  Christian  point  of  view,  see 
Williamson,  The  Great  Law,  a  Study  of  Religions  Origins  and  of  the 
Unity    Underlying    Them. 


42  THE   NEW   WORLD 

prosperous,  he  was  enjoying  to  the  full  the  luxuries 
of  life.  No  thought  of  a  serious  nature  disturbed  his 
golden  serenity.  Then  suddenly  a  new  factor  appears 
upon  the  scene.  The  Dominican  Friars,  overflowing 
with  zeal  for  God's  little  ones,  make  their  appearance 
and  all  is  changed ! 

It  was  in  1510  that  the  Friars  came.  There  were 
four  of  them,  under  the  leadership  of  Pedro  de  Cor- 
dova. The  name  of  one  of  his  followers,  Fray  Antonio 
de  Montesimos,  should  be  mentioned  also,  for  reasons 
which  will  subsequently  appear. 

From  the  first  these  monks  ministered  not  only  to 
their  own  countrymen,  but,  to  the  concern  of  all,  to 
the  natives.  They  showed  and  said  that  they  were 
unwilling  to  regard  the  Indians  as  mere  beasts  of 
burden;  that  they  had  as  much  right  to  the  Gospel 
as  had  the  Spaniards.  Many  disputes  naturally  re- 
sulted from  these  actions,  since  the  logical  outcome 
of  such  an  attitude  entailed  a  treatment  of  the  natives 
which  would  disrupt  the  entire  economic  system,  it 
being  impossible  for  the  Don  to  look  upon  his  slaves 
as  fellow  Christians  and  get  the  last  drop  of  work 
out  of  them.  And  his  exploitation  of  the  Indians  was 
founded  upon  this  last  drop  of  work  basis. 

Though  he  must  have  heard  the  matter  discussed 
many  times,  and  though  from  earliest  days  he  had  been 
in  a  position  to  know  better,  apparently  the  right  and 
wrong  of  this  matter  had  never  occurred  to  Las  Casas. 
Then,  too,  he  appears  to  have  paid  little  heed  at  the 
first  to  the  teaching  of  the  Friars.  Just  what  was 
responsible  for  his  beginning  to  listen  to  them  we  know 
not ;  all  that  we  do  know  is  that  their  words  did  find 
a  lodgment  in  his  mind,  and  that  their  conclusiveness 
finally  overcame  all  his  prejudices. 

It  was  on  the  octave  of  All  Saints,  we  are  led  to 
believe,  that  he  crossed  the  Rubicon,  for  he  writes  of 
the  prior's  sermon  on  that  day:    *Tt  was  a  sermon  so 


CONQUISTADORES  OF  THE  CROSS  43 

lofty  and  so  divine  that  I  held  myself  happy  to  hear 
it." 

In  response  to  the  preacher's  invitation  at  the  close 
of  this  epoch-making  sermon,  many  of  his  hearers, 
including  Las  Casas,  sent  their  slaves  to  a  rendezvous. 
There  they  received  from  the  prior,  crucifix  in  hand, — 
assisted  by  interpreters, — their  first  instruction  in 
Christian  doctrine,  and  thus  began  on  the  8th  of 
November,  1510,  the  first  real  missionary  effort  made 
in  the  Americas  to  instruct  the  aborigines. 

Deeds  more  than  words  carry  conviction,  and  these 
efforts, — when  and  where  we  are  again  at  a  loss  to 
say, — resulted  in  changing  the  young  planter  into  a 
Minister  of  the  Gospel.  Into  the  story  of  his  life 
the  change  whereby  he  gave  up  his  business  and  be- 
came a  priest,  breaks  with  strange  suddenness.  How 
long  he  had  been  considering  the  matter,  whether  the 
F.riars,  finding  him  a  willing  listener,  had  pled  with 
him  until  he  yielded,  or  whether  all  along  he  had  had 
a  subconscious  tendency  toward  the  Church,  we  know 
not.  All  that  we  do  know  is  found  in  the  following 
quaint  passage  from  his  own  memoirs: 

In  this  same  year  and  in  these  same  days,  when  the  father, 
Fray  Pedro  de  Cordoba,  went  to  La  Vega,  a  cleric  called 
Bartholomew  de  Las  Casas  had  sung  a  new  mass ;  he  was 
a  native  of  Seville  and  among  the  oldest  (settlers)  in  the 
island,  and  that  was  the  first  time  that  a  new  mass  was 
sung  in  all  the  Indies ;  on  account  of  being  the  first,  the 
event  was  celebrated  with  great  festivity  by  the  Admiral 
(Don  Diego  Columbus)  and  everybody  who  was  in  the  city 
of  La  Vega;  they  comprised  a  large  number  of  the  inhabitants 
of  the  island,  for  it  was  smelting  time,  when  each  brought 
his  gold  with  his  Indians  to  have  it  melted,  all  meeting  to- 
gether as  people  do  to  make  payments,  in  the  places  where 
fairs  are  held  in  Castile;  as  there  were  no  gold  coins*  they 
made  certain  pieces  in  imitation  of  castellanos  and  ducats, 
different  sorts  in  the  same  smelting,  where  the  King's  fifth 
was  melted  and  paid;  these  coins  they  offered  (to  the  new 
priest)  while  others  made  arrieles  to  offer.    Reales  were  cur- 


44  THE   NEW   WORLD 

rent,  and  many  of  these  were  presented,  all  of  which  the 
newly  ordained  priest  gave  to  his  godfather,  save  a  few  gold 
pieces  that  were  especially  well  made.  There  was  one  notable 
feature  of  this  first  mass,  with  which  the  clergy  present  were 
not  satisfied:  namely,  there  was  not  a  drop  of  wine  in  the 
whole  feast,  because  no  ship  having  arrived^  from  Castile 
since  a  long  time  there  was  none  in  the  entire  island. ^ 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  Las  Casas  was  the  first  person 
to  be  ordained  to  the  Sacred  Ministry  in  the  new 
world. 

The  newly  ordained  priest  began  at  once  to  work  as 
an  educator  among  the  Indians,  and  so  skillfully  did 
he  proceed  that  he  had  soon  acquired  a  fame  through- 
out all  the  colonies.  Specially  among  the  Indians  was 
his  name  known.  The  early  history  of  Cuba  resounds 
with  the  stories  of  his  deeds  in  their  behalf.  Though 
his  opposition  to  slavery  came  later,  within  a  year  he 
was  known  as  the  friend  of  the  natives  wherever  tale- 
bearers went.  So  much  so-,  that  often  when  a  new 
district  was  to  be  occupied  in  Cuba,  the  governor  found 
it  advisable  to  send  Las  Casas  ahead  of  him  to  prepare 
the  way. 

The  veneration  which  the  Cuban  Indians  felt  for 
him  at  this  period  of  his  career  was  remarkable.  They 
trusted  him  alone  of  all  his  people ;  they  believed  him  to 
be  omnipotent  and  gave  him  the  magician's  title  of 
Bebique.  No  tribute-bearers  to  the  governor  ever 
failed  to  bring  a  free-will  offering  of  affection  to  their 
friend.  Las  Casas. 

Thus  matters  proceeded  for  four  years,  but  the 
greatest  was  yet  to  be.  Though  his  works  of  mercy 
were  many,  and  though  he  sincerely  labored  for  the 
natives,  still  his  great  awakening  was  not  yet.  The 
Las  Casas  of  imperishable  fame  was  yet  to  arise. 
Once  again  it  required  a  Dominican  to  arouse  him. 

The  first  man  publicly  to  condemn  slavery  in  the 

*MacNutt,  Bartholomew  de  Las  Casas,  41. 


CONQUISTADORES  OF  THE  CROSS  45 

western  world  was  Fray  Antonio  de  Montesimos. 
Like  many  of  his  followers,  he  took  as  his  text  on  the 
great  occasion  which  marked  the  beginning  of  his  cam- 
paign, the  words,  "I  am  the  voice  of  one  crying  in 
the  wilderness."  With  fearless  eloquence  Fray  An- 
tonio exposed  the  barbarity  of  human  servitude.  The 
subsequent  behavior  of  his  hearers,  among  whom  were 
the  most  prominent  in  the  colony  of  Santo  Domingo, 
sounds  sadly  familiar  to  the  ears  of  all  students  of 
history.  They  went  in  a  body  to  the  monastery  and 
protested  against  such  revolutionary  doctrines  and  de- 
manded a  retraction  next  Sunday !  Like  Robert  of 
Sicily,  they  could  enjoy  their  Gospel  only  so  long  as 
*'deposuit  potentes  de  sede,  et  exaltavit  humiles"  ^  was 
left  out.  To  the  confounded  protesters  the  Prior  re- 
plied that  Antonio's  words  represented  the  sentiments 
of  the  entire  Dominican  community,  and  had  been  pro- 
nounced with  his  approval !  To  the  answered  threat 
that  they  would  be  driven  from  the  Indies  they  re- 
plied humbly  that  they  cared  not,  and  on  the  next 
Sunday,  Fray  Antonio,  to  the  text  of  "Repetam  scien- 
tiam  meam  a  principio  et  operatorem  meum  probabo 
justum"  (Job  XXXVI,  3),  elaborated  upon  his  previ- 
ous discourse  and  announced  that  the  sacraments  of  the 
Church  would  henceforth  be  refused  to  all  who  con- 
tinued in  their  wicked  ways.  He  further  dared  his 
adversaries  to  appeal  to  Spain.  Appeal  they  did,  and 
after  many  interesting  vicissitudes  the  controversy  was 
decided,  be  it  noted  by  all  who  think  the  court  of 
Spain  hopelessly  corrupt,  against  the  rich  and  in- 
fluential nobles.  Further  and  more  important,  the 
*'Laws  of  Burgos'*  were  subsequently  and  consequently 
promulgated,  which,  as  the  first  legal  recognition  of  the 
rights  of  aborigines,  are  worthy  of  everlasting  com- 
memoration. 

So  much  for  the  Dominicans  and  their  accomplish- 

*The  seventh  verse  of  the  Magnificat,  St.  Luke  I,  52 


46  THE   NEW   WORLD 

ments.  Let  us  return  to  their  great  convert.  As  yet, 
though  a  benevolent  priest,  Las  Casas  was  a  large 
slave-holder;  as  yet  the  cry  of  the  innocents  had  not 
reached  his  ears.     But  his  day  was  at  hand. 

It  happened  that  he  was  asked  to  preach  at  Baracoa 
on  Pentecost,  1514,  and  in  searching  the  Scriptures 
for  a  text  came  by  chance  upon  these  verses  in  the 
34th  chapter  of  Ecclesiasticus : 

He  that  sacrificeth  of  a  thing  wrongfully  gotten,  his  offer- 
ing is  ridiculous,  and  the  gifts  of  unjust  men  are  not  accepted. 

The  most  High  is  not  pleased  with  the  offerings  of  the 
wicked;  neither  is  He  pacified  for  sin  by  the  multitude  of 
sacrifices. 

Whoso  bringeth  an  offering  of  the  goods  of  the  poor  doeth 
as  one  that  kiileth  the  son  before  his  father's  eyes. 

The  bread  of  the  needy  is  their  life;  he  that  defraudeth  him 
thereof  is  a  man  of  blood. 

He  that  taketh  away  his  neighbor's  living,  slayeth  him; 
and  he  that  defraudeth  the  laborer  of  his  hire  is  a  blood- 
shedder. 

As  he  read  them,  there  suddenly  broke  through  his 
mind  a  realization  of  the  value  of  God's  little  ones, 
and  of  his  own  responsibility  in  the  matter.  Just  as 
St.  Augustine  was  converted  by  reading  the  13th  and 
14th  verses  in  the  13th  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans,  so  was  Las  Casas  by  reading  these  from 
Ecclesiasticus.  Though  the  change  came  slowly  and 
though  some  time  elapsed  before  he  had  thoroughly 
found  himself,  when  he  did,  the  change  was  volcanic. 
Resolved  to  do  nothing  by  halves  he  freed  all  his  slaves 
and  embarked  upon  that  fiery  crusade  against  slavery 
which  made  him  the  hero  of  the  Church  and  the  most 
reviled  and  hated  man  in  the  Americas. 

One  interesting  incident  at  this  time  is  worth  record- 
ing. The  same  old  problem  which  has  come  to  so  many 
perplexed  him.  Should  he  let  his  slaves  go  so  that  he 
could  denounce  the  institution  without  fear  of  criti- 
cism, or  should  he  keep  them  in  benevolent  bondage 


CONQUISTADORES  OF  THE  CROSS  47 

lest  if  set  free  a  far  worse  fate  befall  them?  He  de- 
cided that  his  duty  was  clear,  and,  without  a  slave  left 
to  his  name,  began  his  great  crusade. 

Of  the  subsequent  labors  of  Las  Casas,  of  his  many- 
voyages  to  Spain,  there  to  plead  with  the  Emperor  in 
behalf  of  the  suffering  Indians,  of  his  many  confer- 
ences with  the  godly  Cardinal  Ximenez,  of  his  insisting 
after  he  had  won  the  imperial  ear  and  become  as  it 
were  a  dictator  of  policies,  on  measures  so  radical  that 
they  would  have  wrecked  the  entire  colonial  system ; 
of  the  failure  of  the  colonial  governors  to  carry  out  the 
laws  which,  through  his  activities,  were  passed,  and 
his  consequent  righteous  rage  and  despair ;  of  his  great 
blunder  in  recommending  as  a  compromise  that  negro 
slavery  be  substituted  for  that  of  the  Indians,^  of  these 
things  we  have  no  space  to  speak  here.  The  most  that 
we  can  do  is  to  relate  two  or  three  characteristic  epi- 
sodes in  his  life,  hoping  that  from  them  the  reader 
will  gain  a  good  idea  of  the  man. 

It  was  when  Las  Casas  was  working  in  Guatemala 
that  he  had  written  a  paper  called  "De  unico  vocationis 
modo"  in  which  he  had  developed  two  propositions, 
the  first  that  men  must  be  brought  to  Christ  by  persua- 
sion and  not  by  force,  and  the  second  that  war  against 
the  individual  was  not  justified  unless  some  specific 
injury  had  been  sustained. 

*  Mr,  Fiske,  in  commenting  on  the  unfair  way  in  which  Las  Casas 
has  been  treated  for  his  momentary  and  thoughtless  error  in  suggesting 
the  use  of  negroes  ae  slaves  in  place  of  the  Indians,  points  out  that  in- 
stead of _  being,  as  his  detractors  would  have  it,  the  proposer  of  negro 
slavery  in  America,  he  was  really  in  the  end  its  great  opponent.  He 
says:  "The  African  slave-trade  would  have  assumed  much  larger  pro- 
portions than  it  has  ever  known,  and  its  widely  ramifying  influence  for 
evil,  its  poisonous  effects  upon  the  character  of  European  society  in  the 
New  World,  whether  Spanish  or  English,  would  probably  have  surpassed 
anything  that  we  can  now  realize.  When  the  work  of  Las  Casas  is 
deeply  considered,  we  cannot  make  him  anything  else  but  an  antagonist 
of  human  slavery  in  all  its  forms,  and  the  mightiest  and  most  effective 
antagonist,  withal,  that  has  ever  lived.  Subtract  his  glorious  life  from 
the  history  of  the  past,  and  we  might  still  be  waiting,  sick  with  hope 
deferred,  for  a  Wilberforce,  a  Garrison,  and  a  Lincoln."  (.The  Dis- 
covery of  America,  by  John  Fiske,  Vol.  II.) 


48  THE   NEW   WORLD 

These  propositions  would  not  seem  so  unusual  to 
us  today,  but  when  written  they  made  a  great  sensa- 
tion. They  were  translated  from  the  Latin  into  Span- 
ish and  spread  broadcast  among  the  colonists.  It 
was  the  second  proposition  that  brought  the  most 
criticism  down  upon  him,  since  the  only  way  in  which 
the  colonists  had  been  able  to  keep  a  supply  of  slaves 
was  by  incessant  conflict  with  the  native  tribes.  In 
these  they  made  many  prisoners,  and  it  was  the  custom 
of  olden  days  that  persons  captured  in  warfare  could 
be  brought  home  as  slaves.  It  was  under  such  condi- 
tions, for  example,  that  the  ancient  Britons  were 
brought  back  to  the  imperial  city  by  the  Tiber  and 
that  vast  numbers  of  the  slaves  who  served  the  Roman 
Empire  were  obtained.  Since,  then,  this  practice 
against  which  Las  Casas  spoke  was  not  an  innovation, 
but  had  centuries  of  precedents  in  its  favor,  his  words 
were  received  with  jeers  and  anger. 

Some  of  the  Conquistadores  in  addition  to  being 
angry  were  amazed  at  the  absurdity  of  Las  Casas* 
first  proposition.  "Try  it,"  they  taunted,  "try  with 
words  only  and  without  force  to  bring  the  Indians  into 
the  Church."  Las  Casas  gladly  accepted  the  chal- 
lenge and  entered  into  a  formal  contract  with  the 
acting  governor  of  Tuzulutlan,  one  Alonzo  Maldonado. 
by  which  he  undertook  to  proselyte  the  Indians  of 
Tuzulutlan.  Tuzulutlan  was  called  by  the  Spaniards 
the  Tierra  Guerra  (land  of  war),  because  of  all  the  In- 
dians of  Central  America  none  had  resisted  them  quite 
so  ferociously  as  had  those  of  that  province.  Three 
separate  expeditions  had  been  sent  out  to  subdue  them, 
but  had  been  defeated  ingloriously.  If  the  Conquista- 
dores had  been  asked  to  choose  the  province  which 
would  be  the  most  difficult  for  the  missionary  to  work 
in,  they  undoubtedly  would  have  chosen  this  one.  So 
sure  were  they,  that  the  government  pledged  itself 
in  case  Las  Casas  succeeded  in  pacifying  the  tribes 


CONQUISTADORES  OF  THE  CROSS  49 

by  peaceful  measures,  to  make  the  territory  a  direct 
appendage  of  the  crown, — not  to  give  repartimientos 
in  it  to  private  persons  (which  meant  not  to  let  any 
slaves  be  made  among  the  natives),  and  lastly  not  to 
let  any  layman  enter  the  district  for  five  years. 

Four  Dominican  monks,  therefore,  were  to  attempt 
the  work  which  had  defeated  three  armies.  We  can 
well  imagine  how  gladly  the  annoyed  slave-holders 
received  the  news  of  this  attempt, — at  last,  they 
thought,  they  would  get  rid  of  these  trouble-makers. 

The  Dominicans  started  their  preparation  on  their 
knees.  Several  days  were  spent  in  fasting  and  prayer 
in  their  cells,  after  which  they  came  forth  with  the 
following  unusual  plan. 

They  composed  a  lengthy  ballad  in  the  language  of 
the  natives  which,  beginning  with  the  story  of  the 
creation  and  fall,  contained  all  the  Biblical  narratives 
and  doctrines  of  the  Church.  Would  that  this  re- 
markable literary  work  were  still  in  existence !  While 
some  of  the  monks  were  busy  on  this  epic  others 
occupied  themselves  setting  it  to  music,  so  that  it  might 
be  accompanied  by  the  crude  instruments  with  which 
the  natives  were  familiar. 

Though  the  missionaries  had  only  been  a  few  years 
in  Guatemala,  they  had  labored  so  diligently  over  the 
language  and  customs  of  the  inhabitants  that  they  were 
able — marvel  of  marvels — to  complete  the  whole  thing 
within  a  couple  of  months.  Of  course  the  music  that 
is  set  to  the  teponaztli,  or  hollow  cylindrical  wooden 
drum,  is  not  concerned  with  motives  and  counterpoint, 
being  largely  monotonic,  so  the  monks  did  not  need 
much  time  to  attend  to  the  harmony.  Having  finished 
the  cantata,  or  whatever  you  choose  to  call  it,  the  good 
Fathers  began  to  study  how  they  should  introduce 
this  poem  to  the  notice  of  the  Indians,  and  availing 
themselves  of  a  happy  thought,  called  in  as  coadjutors 
four  Indian  merchants  whose  habit  it  was  to  make 


50  THE   NEW   WORLD 

journeys  several  times  a  year  into  the  Land  of  War. 
To  continue  the  story  in  Sir  Arthur  Helps's  words: 

The  monks,  with  great  care,  taught  these  four  men  to 
repeat  the  couplets  which  they  had  composed.  The  pupils 
entered  entirely  into  the  views  of  their  instructors.  Indeed, 
they  took  such  pains  in  learning  their  lessons,  and  (with  the 
fine  sense  for  musical  intonation  which  the  Indians  generally 
possessed)  repeated  these  verses  so  well,  that  there  was  noth- 
ing left  to  desire.  .  .  .  Las  Casas  communicated  his  intended 
undertaking  to  Domingo  de  Betanzos,  now  the  head  of  the 
Dominican  Order  in  New  Spain,  who  was  delighted  to  give 
his  sanction  and  his  blessing  to  the  good  work..    .    . 

The  enterprise  was  now  ready  to  be  carried  into  action, — ■ 
to  be  transplanted  from  the  schools  into  the  world.  It  was 
resolved  that  the  merchants  should  commence  their  journey 
into  "the  Land  of  War,"  carrying  with  them  not  only  their 
own  merchandize,  but  being  furnished  by  Las  Casas  with  the 
usual  small  wares  to  please  aborigines,  such  as  scissors, 
knives,   looking-glasses,   and  bells.    .    .    . 

It  is  a  bold  figure  to  illustrate  the  feelings  of  a  monk  by 
those  of  a  mother;  but  it  may  be  doubted  whether  many 
mothers  have  suffered  a  keener  agony  of  apprehensive  ex- 
pectation than  Las  Casas  and  his  brethren  endured  at  this 
and  other  similar  points  of  their  career.  They  had  the 
fullest  faith  in  God  and  the  utmost  reliance  upon  Him;  but 
they  knew  that  He  acts  through  secondary  means  and  how 
easily,  they  doubtless  thought,  might  some  failure  in  their 
own  preparation — some  unworthiness  in  themselves — some  un- 
fortunate conjunction  of  political  affairs  in  the  Indies — some 
dreadful  wile  of  the  Evil  One — frustrate  all  their  long-en- 
during hopes.  In  an  age  when  private  and  individual  suc- 
cess is  made  too  much  of,  and  success  for  others  too  little, 
it  may  be  difficult  for  many  persons  to  imagine  the  intense 
interest  with  which  these  childless  men  looked  forward  to 
the  realization  of  their  great  religious  enterprise — the  bring- 
ing of  the  Indians  by  peaceful  means  into  the  fold  of  Christ. 

The  merchants  were  received,  as  was  the  custom  in  a 
country  without  inns,  into  the  palace  of  the  Cacique,  where 
they  met  with  a  better  reception  than  usual,  being  enabled 
to  make  him  presents  of  these  new  things  from  Castille. 
They  then  set  up  their  tent,  and  began  to  sell  their  goods 
as  they  were  wont  to  do,  their  customers  thronging  about 
them  to  see  the  Spanish  novelties.  When  the  sale  was  over 
for  that  day,  the  chief  men  amongst  the  Indians  remained 


CONQUISTADORES  OF  THE  CROSS  51 

with  the  Cacique,  to  do  him  honor.  In  the  evening,  the 
merchants  asked  for  a  "teplanastle,"  an  instrument  of  music 
which  we  may  suppose  to  have  been  the  same  as  the  Mexican 
te/^ona^jtli,  or  drum.  They  then  produced  some  timbrels  and 
bells,  which  they  had  brought  with  them,  and  began  to  sing 
the  verses  which  they  had  learned  by  heart,  accompanying 
themselves  on  the  musical  instruments.  The  effect  produced 
was  very  great.  The  sudden  change  of  character,  not  often 
made,  from  a  merchant  to  a  priest,  at  once  arrested  the 
attention  of  the  assemblage.  Then,  if  the  music  was  beyond 
anything  that  these  Indians  had  heard,  the  words  were  still 
more  extraordinary;  for  the  good  fathers  had  not  hesitated 
to  put  into  their  verses  the  questionable  assertion  that  idols 
were  demons,  and  the  certain  fact  that  human  sacrifices  were 
abominable.  The  main  body  of  the  audience  was  delighted, 
and  pronounced  these  merchants  to  be  ambassadors  from  new 
Gods. 

The  Cacique,  with  the  caution  of  a  man  in  authority,  sus- 
pended his  judgment  until  he  had  heard  more  of  the  matter. 
The  next  day,  and  for  seven  succeeding  days,  this  sermon 
in  song  was  repeated.  In  public  and  in  private,  the  person 
who  insisted  most  on  this  repetition  was  the  Cacique;  and 
he  expressed  a  wish  to  fathom  the  matter,  and  to  know  the 
origin  and  meaning  of  these  things.  The  prudent  merchants 
replied,  that  they  only  sang  what  they  had  heard ;  that  it 
was  not  their  business  to  explain  these  verses,  for  that  office 
belonged  to  certain  padres,  who  instructed  the  people.  "And 
who  are  padrcsf"  asked  the  Chief.  In  answer  to  this  ques- 
tion, the  merchants  painted  pictures  of  the  Dominican  monks, 
in  their  robes  of  black  and  white,  and  with  their  tonsured 
heads.  The  merchants  then  described  the  lives  of  these 
padres:  how  they  did  not  eat  meat,  and  how  they  did  not 
desire  gold,  or  feathers,  or  cocoa ;  that  they  were  not  married, 
and  had  no  communication  with  women ;  that  night  and  day 
they  sang  the  praises  of  God;  and  that  they  knelt  before  very 
beautiful  images.  Such  were  the  persons,  the  merchants  said, 
who  could  and  would  explain  these  couplets  :  they  were  such 
good  people,  and  so  ready  to  teach,  that  if  the  Cacique  were 
to  send  for  them,  they  would  most  willingly  come. 

The  Indian  chief  resolved  to  see  and  hear  these  marvelous 
men  in  black  and  white,  with  their  hair  in  the  form  of  a 
garland,  who  were  so  different  from  other  men ;  and  for 
this  purpose,  when  the  merchants  returned,  he  sent  in  com- 
pany with  them  a  brother  of  his,  a  young  man  twenty-two 
years  of  age,  who  was  to  invite  the  Dominicans  to  visit  his 
brother's  country,  and  to  carry  them  presents.     The  cautious 


52  THE   NEW   WORLD 

Cacique  instructed  his  brother  to  look  well  to  the  ways  of 
these  padres,  to  observe  whether  they  had  gold  and  silver 
like  the  other  Christians,  and  whether  there  were  women 
in  their  houses.  These  instructions  having  been  given,  and 
his  brother  having  taken  his  departure,  the  Cacique  made 
large  oflferings  of  incense  and  great  sacrifices  to  his  idols 
for  the  success  of  the  embassage. 

On  the  arrival  of  this  company  at  Santiago,  Las  Casas 
and  the  Dominican  monks  received  the  young  Indian  chief 
with  every  demonstration  of  welcome :  and  it  need  hardly 
be  said  with  what  joy  they  heard  from  the  merchants  who 
accompanied  him  of  the  success  of  their  mission. 

While  the  Indian  Prince  was  occupied  in  visiting  the  town 
of  Santiago,  the  monks  debated  amongst  themselves  what 
course  they  should  pursue  in  reference  to  the  invitation 
which  they  had  received  from  the  Cacique.  Guided  through- 
out by  great  prudence,  they  resolved  not  to  risk  the  safety 
of  the  whole  of  their  body,  but  to  send  only  one  monk  at 
first  as  an  ambassador  and  explorer.  Their  choice  fell  upon 
Father  Luis  Cancer,  who  probably  was  the  most  skilled  of 
all  the  four  in  the  language  that  was  likely  to  be  best  under- 
stood in  Tuzulutlan.  Meanwhile  the  Cacique's  brother  and 
his  attendants  made  their  observations  on  the  mode  of  life 
of  the  monks,  who  gratified  him  and  them  by  little  presents. 
It  was  time  now  to  return;  and  the  whole  party,  consisting 
of  Luis  Cancer,  the  Cacique's  brother,  his  Indians,  and  the 
four  merchants  of  Guatemala,  set  off  from  Santiago  on  their 
way  to  the  Cacique's  country.  Luis  Cancer  carried  with  him 
a  present  for  the  Cacique  in  fabrics  of  Castille,  and  also  some 
crosses  and  images.  The  reason  given  for  carrying  these 
latter  is,  "That  the  Cacique  might  read  in  them  that  which 
he  might  forget  in  the  sermons  that  would  be  preached  to 
him." 

The  journey  of  Father  Luis  was  a  continued  triumph. 
Everywhere  the  difiference  was  noticed  between  his  dress, 
customs,  and  manners,  and  those  of  the  Spaniards  who  had 
already  been  seen  in  Tuzulutlan.  When  he  came  into  the 
Cacique's  territory  he  was  received  under  triumphal  arches, 
and  the  ways  were  made  clean  before  him  as  if  he  had 
been  another  Montezuma,  traversing  his  kingdom.  At  the 
entrance  of  the  Cacique's  own  town,  the  Chief  himself  came 
out  to  meet  Father  Luis,  and  bending  before  him,  cast  down 
his  eyes,  showing  him  the  same  mark  of  reverence  that  he 
would  have  shown  to  the  priests  of  that  country.  More  sub- 
stantial and  abiding  honors  soon  followed.  At  the  Cacique's 
orders  a  church  was  built,  and  in  it  the  father  said  mass  in 


CONQUISTADORES  OF  THE  CROSS  53 

the  presence  of  the  Chief,  who  was  especially  delighted  with 
the  cleanliness  of  the  sacerdotal  garments,  for  the  priests 
of  his  own  country,  like  those  of  Mexico,  affected  filth  and 
darkness,  the  fitting  accompaniments  for  a  religion  of  terror. 

Meanwhile,  Father  Luis  continued  to  explain  the  Christian 
creed,  having  always  a  most  attentive  and  favorable  hearer 
in  the  Cacique.  The  good  monk  had  taken  the  precaution 
to  bring  with  him  the  written  agreement  signed  by  the  Gov- 
ernor, and  he  explained  to  the  Chief  the  favorable  conditions 
that  it  contained  for  the  welfare  of  the  Indians.  The  mer- 
chants were  witnesses  who  might  be  appealed  to  ^  for  the 
meaning  of  this  document;  and  that  they  were  faithful  to 
the  monks — indeed,  a  sort  of  lay-brotherhood — may  be  in- 
ferred from  the  fact  of  their  continuing  to  chant  every  even- 
ing the  verses  which  had  won  for  them  at  first  the  title  of 
ambassadors  from  new  gods.  The  Cacique's  brother  gave  a 
favorable  report  of  what  he  had  seen  at  Santiago,  and  the 
result  of  all  these  influences  on  the  mind  of  the  Indian 
Chieftain  was  such,  that  he  determined  to  embrace  the  Chris- 
tian Faith.  No  sooner  had  he_  become  a  proselyte,  than,  with 
all  the  zeal  and  energy  belonging  to  that  character,  he  began 
to  preach  the  new  doctrine  to  his  own  vassals.  He  was  the 
first  to  pull  down  and  to  burn  his  idols;  and  many  of  the 
chiefs,  in  imitation  of  their  master,  likewise  became  icono- 
clasts. 

In  a  word,  the  mission  of  Father  Luis  was  supremely  suc- 
cessful, and  after  he  had  visited  some  of  the  towns  subject 
to  the  converted  Cacique,  he  returned,  according  to  the  plan 
that  had  been  determined  upon  by  the  brethren,  to  the  town 
of  Santiago,  where  Las  Casas  and  the  other  monks  received 
with  ineffable  delight  the  good  tidings  which  their  brother 
had  to  communicate  to  them.i 

The  next  incident  is  in  connection  with  the  ex- 
perience which  befell  Las  Casas  immediately  after  he 
had  been  appointed  Bishop  of  Chiapa,  a  district  near 
the  scene  of  his  successful  labors  in  the  Tierra  Guerra 
of  Guatemala.  He  had  been  consecrated  in  Seville  on 
the  4th  of  July,  1544,  and  had  sailed  with  forty-five 
Dominican  monks  to  proselyte  his  frontier  diocese.  It 
was  to  be  expected  that  he  would  be  received  in  silence ; 
as  the  most  hated  man  in  the  new  world,  now  that  he 

*  Helps,  The  Spanish  Conquest  in  America,  III,  pp.  237-243. 


54  THE   NEW   WORLD 

had  been  elevated  to  the  episcopate,  he  was  the  most 
feared.  Though  he  was  now  seventy  years  of  age, 
he  had  not  abated  one  bit  in  his  determination  to  put 
down  slavery,  and  he  had  made  up  his  mind,  perhaps 
some  may  think  a  bit  unwisely,  to  use  his  episcopal 
power  to  exclude  it  from  his  diocese. 

Arriving  at  his  new  post,  the  man  of  God  determined 
to  take  an  order  of  the  pope,  which  had  forbidden 
slavery,  literally;  and  accordingly  he  announced  ex 
cathedra  that  absolution  would  be  refused  to  all  Span- 
iards who  continued  to  hold  slaves.  The  officials  of 
the  province  refused  to  carry  out  the  laws  and  Las 
Casas  journeyed  to  Honduras  to  lay  the  case  before 
the  high  court,  the  Audiencia. 

Unable  to  get  redress  there,  he  threatened  to  excom- 
municate the  judges  if  they  refused  to  do  their  duty, 
and  he  tells  us  in  his  memoirs  of  one  of  the  judges 
whose  conscience  being  troubled  heaped  abuse  upon 
him  and  said,  ''You  are  a  scoundrel,  a  foul  man,  a 
bad  monk,  a  worse  bishop, — a  shameless  scoundrel — 
you  ought  to  be  flogged!"  Las  Casas  replied.  ''The 
Lord  will  punish  me  for  my  sins  which  are  many." 
By  his  fearless  insistence,  he  at  last  forced  the  Au- 
diencia to  send  an  officer  to  Chiapa  to  enforce  the  laws, 
and  when  the  inhabitants  of  the  chief  city  of  his  dio- 
cese, Ciudad  Real,  heard  of  their  bishop's  triumph  they 
determined  to  resist  his  entry  into  the  city. 

Then  it  was  that  the  courage  of  the  old  man  rose 
to  sublime  heights,  and  "unguarded  and  on  foot,  with 
only  a  stick  in  his  hand  and  a  breviary  in  his  girdle," 
he  approached  the  rebellious  city. 

"On  the  way  he  stopped  at  a  Dominican  monastery. 
The  monks  urged  him  to  turn  back,  saying  that  the 
infuriated  populace  would  surely  kill  him.  But  he 
insisted  on  going  on. 

"  'For,'  he  said,  'if  I  do  not  go  to  Ciudad  Real,  I 
banish  myself  from  my  church;  and  it  w^ll  be  said  of 


CONQUISTADORES  OF  THE  CROSS  55 

me,  with  much  reason,  The  wicked  fleeth;  and  no 
man  pursueth.'  .  .  .  If  I  do  not  endeavor  to  enter 
my  church,  of  whom  shall  I  have  to  complain  to  the 
king,  or  to  the  pope,  as  having  thrust  me  out  of  it? 
Are  my  adversaries  so  bitter  against  me  that  the  first 
word  will  be  a  deadly  thrust  through  my  heart,  without 
giving  me  the  chance  of  soothing  them?  In  conclusion, 
reverend  fathers,  I  am  resolved,  trusting  in  the  mercy 
of  God  and  in  your  holy  prayers,  to  set  out  for  my 
diocese.  To  tarry  here,  or  to  go  elsewhere,  has  all  the 
inconveniences  which  have  just  been  stated.'  " 

One  last  word  about  Las  Casas  to  show  the  extent 
to  which  he  was  hated.  In  speaking  of  this,  Sir  Arthur 
Helps  writes: 

The  hatred  to  Las  Casas  throughout  the  New  World 
amounted  to  a  passion.  Letters  were  written  to  the  residents 
in  Chiapa,  expressing  pity  for  them  as  having  met  the  greatest 
misfortune  that  could  occur  to  them,  in  being  placed  under 
such  a  bishop.  They  did  not  name  him,  but  spoke  of  him 
as  "That  Devil  who  has  come  to  you  for  a  bishop."  The 
following  is  an  extract  from  one  of  these  letters.  "We  say 
here,  that  very  great  must  be  the  sins  of  your  country,  when 
God  chastises  it  with  such  a  scourge  as  sending  that  Anti- 
christ for  a  bishop."! 

Such  was  the  life  of  the  great  Apostle  to  the  southern 
red  men.  In  conclusion  we  can  only  say  that  driven 
by  his  enemies  from  the  lands  for  which  he  had  labored 
he  spent  the  remaining  years  of  his  life  in  Spain.  They 
were  fruitful  years,  however,  for  Las  Casas  never  could 
be  idle,  and  to  the  unflagging  diligence  of  this  last  period 
of  his  life  the  world  owes  much  of  the  information  it 
possesses  of  the  era  of  the  Conquistadores.  To  the 
many  volumes  he  wrote  we  now  turn  for  the  history 
of  those  times. 

It  should  not  be  imagined  that  in  telling  the  story 

*  See  new  edition  of  The  Spanish  Conquest  in  America,  IV,  208,  foot- 
note. 


56  THE   NEW   WORLD 

of  the  Dominicans  and  the  Bishop  of  Chiapa  one  ex- 
hausts the  diptychs  of  the  Latin  world.  Though  less 
well  known,  equally  deserving — since  the  Master  gave 
a  penny  also  to  those  who  came  at  the  twelfth  hour — 
were  the  labors  and  exploits  of  the  Franciscans  along 
the  shores  of  the  Amazon  and  Huallaga  Rivers,  and  of 
the  Jesuits  in  what  is  now  Paraguay.  Far  off  from 
all  bases  of  supply,  in  trackless  forests,  and  among 
inhospitable  tribes,  they  repeated  the  triumphs  wrought 
by  Las  Casas  in  the  North.  The  work  of  the  Francis- 
cans along  the  Valley  of  the  Amazon  and  Huallaga 
Rivers  has  been  graphically  described  by  a  recent 
traveler : 

His  [the  missionary's]  wants  were  few  and  he  was  content 
with  the  simplest  fare  and  raiment.  He  may  have  been  of 
noble  blood  and  gentle  nurture,  but  he  was  glad  to  exchange 
a  palace  and  chateau  for  a  palm-thatched  hut  in  Amazonian 
wilds.  If  he  had  not  a  cabin  of  his  own,  he  gratefully 
accepted  such  shelter  as  was  offered  him  by  the  denizens 
of  the  forest.  It  mattered  not  that  it  was  dark  and  smoky 
and  noisome,  alive  with  loathsome  insects  and  the  common 
abode  of  filthy  animals  and  jabbering  or  brawHng  men  and 
women.  He  knew  how  to  make  himself  all  to  all  men,  and 
how  to  win  their  hearts  by  patience,  self-abnegation,  and 
sacrifice.  He  ate  what  was  placed  before  him  and  concealed 
any  repugnance  that  the  strange  and  disgusting  food,  which 
was  frequently  offered  him,  was  calculated  to  excite.  He 
knew  no  luxuries,  for  all  these  he  had  left  behind  him  in 
Europe.  His  usual  fare  was  cassava-bread  and  fish,  maize 
and  plantain.  If  these  could  not  be  had  he,  like  the  Indian, 
would  uncomplainingly  appease  his  hunger  by  roots  and  nuts, 
ants,  worms  and  other  creeping  things  even  more  repulsive. 

If  his  nomadic  and  whimsical  children  chose  to  change  their 
place  of  abode,  as  often  occurred  in  the  beginning  of  their 
conversion,  the  padre  followed  them.  Frequently  their  course 
was  through  dense  morasses,  when  the  wanderers  were 
mired  to  the  waist;  at  others  it  was  along  the  rough  bed  of 
a  mountain  torrent,  which  so  cut  and  inflamed  the  naked 
feet  as  to  cause  the  most  excruciating  agony.  It  mattered 
not  how  long  the  journey  lasted,  or  how  great  were  the 
privations  and  sufferings  that  had  to  be  endured,  the  brave 
and  loyal  shepherd  never  separated  from  his  flock.    He  feared 


CONQUISTADORES  OF  THE  CROSS  57 

no  danger  and  shrank  before  no  difficulty.  Perils  far  from 
being  a  deterrent,  had  a  charm  for  him,  and  the  martyr's 
crown,  that  often  awaited  him  in  the  discharge  of  duty,  was 
the  highest  incentive  to  heroic  deeds.   .    .    . 

But  while  making  known  to  the  children  of  the  forest  the 
essentials  of  the  Gospel  of  Peace,  the  Spanish  missionaries 
did  not  forget  to  teach  them,  pari  passu,  the  arts  of  civilized 
life.  They  converted  these  wild  hunters  and  fishermen  into 
skillful  artisans,  herdsmen  and  tillers  of  the  soil.  They  col- 
lected the  roving  and  scattered  tribes  from  the  hidden  recesses 
of  the  forest,  and  formed  them  into  peaceful  communities 
along  the  great  waterways  where  fish  and  game  were  abun- 
dant, and  where  they  could  be  always  under  the  watchful  eye 
of  their  spiritual  guides  and  protectors.  And,  almost  before 
the  civil  authorities  of  Quito  and  Lima  were  aware  of  the 
work  that  was  being  accomplished,  the  banks  of  the  Huallaga 
and  the  Amazon  were  dotted  with  flourishing  towns  and  vil- 
lages, the  homes  of  peaceful  and  happy  Indians  of  many 
tribes  and  languages,  who  were  more  highly  civilized  than 
had  been  the  Incas  even  in  their  palmiest  days,  and  whose 
children  knew  more  of  their  Creator  and  of  His  relation  to 
His  creatures  than  did  the  wisest  men  of  Cuzcq.  The  Con- 
quistadores  of  the  Cross,  with  only  the  crucifix  in  their 
hands,  had  In  a  few  short  years  accomplished  what  neither 
Inca  nor  Spanish  arms  had  been  competent  to  achieve — the 
subjugation  of  the  countless  warlike  and  antagonistic  hordes 
of  the  montana.  .    .   .^ 

Worthy,  too,  of  commemoration  and  inclusion  in  all 
histories  of  missions  were  such  men  as  Juan  de  Zumar- 
raga,  Protector  of  the  Indians, — for  whom  he  fought 
loyally  all  his  days — first  Bishop  of  Mexico,  founder 
of  schools  and  hospitals  and  patron  of  industrial  and 
agricultural  activities ;  Peter  Claver  who  gave  his  life 
for  those  in  servitude ;  who  having  declared  himself 
the  "slave  of  the  negroes  for  ever"  spent  his  life  en- 
deavoring to  live  up  to  that  profession.  It  is  told  of 
him  that  he  met  ever}^  slave  ship  which  ever  anchored 
at  Cartagena  with  food  and  delicacies  for  its  wretched 
freight.  To  the  poor  half-crazed  negroes,  he  went  as  a 
messenger  of  mercy  for  forty-four  years.     He  cared 

*  Mozans,  Along  the  Andes  and  Down  the  Amazon,  443  ff. 


58  THE  NEW   WORLD 

personally  for  each  of  the  inmates  of  the  slave  ships 
and  made  one  and  all  believe  him  to  be  their  defender 
and  friend;  Toribio  de  Mogrovejo,  the  second  Bishop 
of  Peru,  who  learned  the  Quichua  language  thoroughly 
in  order  to  find  out  the  real  conditions  and  wants  of 
the  Indians,  and  who  protected  and  worked  for  them 
for  a  score  of  years/ 

The  student  is  urged  to  study  also  the  work  of  the 
Jesuits  in  Paraguay.  In  the  interior  of  that  country 
they  established  thirty  towns.  In  them,  under  a  com- 
munistic form  of  government,  they  taught  the  Indians 
agriculture,  cattle  raising,  cotton  weaving,  carpentry, 
tailoring,  boat  building,  and  almost  every  industry  use- 
ful and  necessary  to  life.  "They  also  made  arms  and 
powder,  musical  instruments,  and  had  silversmiths, 
musicians,  painters,  turners,  and  printers  to  work  their 
printing-presses ;  for  many  books  were  printed  at  the 
missions,  and  they  produced  manuscripts  as  finely  exe- 
cuted as  those  made  by  the  monks  in  European 
monasteries. 

All  the  estancias,  the  agricultural  lands  and  workshops  were, 
so  to  speak,  the  property  of  the  community;  that  is  to  say, 
the  community  worked  them  in  common,  was  fed  and  main- 
tained by  their  productions,  the  whole  under  the  direction 
of  the  two  Jesuits  who  lived  in  every  town.  A  portion  called 
tupinamhal  in  Guarani  was  set  aside  especially  for  the  main- 
tenance of  orphans  and  of  widows.  The  cattle  and  the 
horses,  with  the  exception  of  "los  caballos  del  santo,"  destined 
for  show  at  feasts,  were  also  used  in  common.  The  surplus 
of  the  capital  was  reserved  to  purchase  necessary  commodities 
from  Buenos  Ayres  and  from  Spain.  Each  family  received 
from  the  common  stock  sufficient  for  its  maintenance  during 
good  conduct,  for  the  Jesuits  held  in  its  entirety  the  Pauline 
dictum  that  if  a  man  will  not  work,  then  neither  shall  he 
eat.  But  as  they  held  it,  so  they  practised  it  themselves,  for 
their  lives  were  most  laborious — teaching  and  preaching,  and 
acting  as  overseers  to  the  Indians  in  their  labors  continually, 
from  the  first  moment  of  their  arrival  at  the  missions  till 

*  The  most  available  source  for  information  concerning  these  men  is 
the  Catholic  Encyclopedia. 


CONQUISTADORES  OF  THE  CROSS  59 

their  death.  Thus,  if  the  mayor  of  the  township  complained 
of  any  man  for  remissness  at  his  work,  he  received  no 
rations  till  he  had  improved. 

To  inculcate  habits  of  providence  amongst  the  Indians, 
always  inclined  to  consume  whatever  was  given  to  them  and 
go  fasting  afterwards,  they  issued  the  provisions  but  once  a 
week,  and  when  they  killed  their  oxen  forced  the  Indians 
to  "jerk"  a  certain  quantity  of  beef  to  last  throughout  the 
week.  Vegetables  each  family  was  obliged  to  plant  both  in 
their  gardens  and  in  the  common  fields;  and  all  that  were 
not  actually  consumed  were  dealt  out  to  the  workers  in  the 
common  workshops  or  preserved  for  sale.  .    .    . 

This,  then,  was  the  system  by  means  of  which  the  Jesuits 
succeeded,  without  employing  force  of  any  kind,  which  in 
their  case  would  have  been  quite  impossible,  lost  as  they 
were  amongst  the  crowd  of  Indians,  in  making  the  Guaranis 
endure  the  yoke  of  toil.  .    .    .^ 

The  modern  world  has  no  finer  "manual  training" 
and  industrial  schools  than  Paraguay  had  in  its  thirty 
Jesuit  towns  in  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century ! 
Travelers  tell  us  that  to  this  day  the  beneficent  in- 
fluence of  that  work  is  evident  in  the  country  districts. 
It  is  doubtful  whether  there  has  ever  been  seen  else- 
where such  a  large  and  successful  development  in  the 
field  of  Christian  economics. 

But  we  must  bring  this  chapter  to  an  end.  Having 
seen  the  inspiring  beginning  of  missions  in  Latin 
America,  we  must  pass  on  to  a  consideration  of  the 
later  history  of  the  Conquest,  since  only  as  we  know 
something  about  it  can  we  comprehend  why,  after 
such  glorious  beginnings,  the  seventeenth,  eighteenth 
and  nineteenth  centuries  show  regress  rather  than 
progress. 

*  Cunninghame  Graham,  A   Vanished  Arcadia,  181-183. 


CHAPTER   III 
THE  ROCK  WHENCE  WE  ARE  HEWN 

"South  America  is  the  victim  of  a  bad  start.  It  was 
never  settled  by  whites  in  the  way  that  they  settled  the 
United  States.  All  the  European  blood  from  the 
Caribbean  to  Cape  Horn  probably  does  not  exceed  that 
to  be  found  within  the  area  inclosed  by  lines  connect- 
ing Washington,  Buffalo,  Duluth  and  St.  Louis.  The 
masterful  whites  simply  climbed  upon  the  backs  of  the 
natives  and  exploited  them.  Thus  pride,  contempt  for 
labor,  caste,  social  parasitism,  and  authoritativeness  in 
Church  and  State  fastened  upon  South  American  so- 
ciety and  characterize  it  still.  It  will  be  yet  long  ere 
it  is  transformed  by  such  modern  forces  as  industry, 
democracy  and  science. 

"It  would  be  unpardonable  for  us  ever  to  be  puffed 
up  because  we  enjoy  better  social  and  civic  health  than 
is  usual  in  South  America.  If  our  forefathers  had 
found  here  precious  metals  and  several  millions  of 
agricultural  Indians,  our  social  development  would 
have  resembled  that  of  the  peoples  that  grew  up  in 
New  Spain.  Not  a  race  accounts  for  the  contrast  in 
destiny  between  the  two  Americas,  nor  yet  the  personal 
virtues  of  the  original  settlers,  but  circumstances."  ^ 

Thus  speaks  a  critic  who,  however  one  may  be  in- 
clined to  receive  his  words,  at  least  has  been  a  good 
guide  through  other  fields.  And  certainly  all  will  agree 
with  his  opening  words — South  America,  and  Latin 
America,  had  a  bad  start.    Despite  the  splendid  courage 

*  From  the  preface  of  Ross'  South  of  Panama. 

60 


THE   ROCK   WHENCE   WE   ARE   HEWN         61 

and  faith  of  many  of  the  Conquistadores,  and  despite 
the  holy  zeal  of  the  early  missionaries,  other  influences 
were  more  potent  and  the  Spanish  colonies  did  not 
flourish.  Properly  to  estimate  things  as  they  are  we 
must  learn  about  those  other  influences.  But,  be  it 
noted,  what  is  said  is  said  in  a  spirit  of  humility,  not  of 
self-righteous  pride.  God  knows  North  America  has 
great  and  glaring  sins  of  its  own.  Certain  things  must 
be  comprehended,  however,  if  we  are  to  proceed,  but 
the  student  is  warned  to  approach  the  task  in  the  spirit 
of  the  Publican  rather  than  of  the  Pharisee. 

Following  in  the  footsteps  of  the  Conquistadores 
came  a  steady  stream  of  colonizers,  government 
officials,  clergy,  fortune-hunters  and  adventurers — 
some  wise  and  brave  and  worthy,  some  unwise  and  lazy 
and  unworthy.  It  is  a  mistake  to  imagine  though  that 
the  colonies  were  developed  after  1550  as  they  had  been 
before, — by  spectacular  invasions  led  by  impetuous 
seekers  after  glory  and  gold.  On  the  contrary  in  the 
later  years  the  course  of  colonial  expansion  followed 
along  comparatively  orderly  channels.  The  fierce 
spasmodic  thrusts  of  the  Conquistadores  were  replaced 
by  slow  and  painstaking  political  invasions.  Great 
empires  are  not  built  up  by  adventurers,  however 
keen  their  swords  and  sharp  their  wits,  and  Spain 
built  up  a  great  empire.  Her  dominions  grew  and 
grew,  until  in  1581  when  the  Kingdom  of  Portugal  was 
united  by  a  diplomatic  marriage  with  that  of  Spain 
all  the  New  World  was  at  the  feet  of  Philip  the  Second. 
King  of  Portugal  and  Spain,  the  world  trembled  at 
his  word — South  America  was  his,  and  the  Indies  were 
his,  and  Central  America  and  Mexico  acknowledged 
him  their  lord.  Nor  did  the  dominions  of  Spain  cease 
to  increase  with  the  death  of  Philip.  Despite  un- 
scientific methods — which  an  unsophisticated  world  did 
not  perceive  to  be  unscientific — the  course  of  expan- 
sion went  on  until  1786  when  they  reached  their  great- 


62  THE   NEW   WORLD 

est  extent.  In  that  year,  beginning  at  Porto  Rico  on 
the  East  they  stretched  westward  to  CaHfornia,  and 
northward  to  Missouri,  and  southward  to  ChiH.  Among 
the  large  islands  in  the  West  Indies  all  except  Jamaica 
and  Santo  Domingo  acknowledged  Philip's  will ;  on  the 
northern  continent  what  are  now  Florida  and  southern 
Alabama  and  Mississippi  and  all  the  area  west  of 
the  Mississippi  River,  and  Mexico,  were  Spanish; 
on  the  southern  continent  everything  made  obeisance 
to  the  descendant  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  except 
the  Guianas  and  Brazil. 

Thus  came  into  being  that  vast  division  of  the  world 
which  we  call  Spanish  or  Latin  America ;  which  though 
it  was  split  up  into  a  number  of  different  nations  in 
the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  still  re- 
mains Spanish  in  spirit.  A  territory  it  is  which  by  its 
very  bulk  demands  our  attention ;  which  because  of 
its  huge  resources  must  become  more  and  more  im- 
portant as  the  years  roll  by;  more  and  more  indis- 
pensable to  those  other  parts  of  the  world  which  have 
as  yet  paid  little  attention  to  it.  Physical  bigness 
does  not  necessarily  prove  anything,  but  such  extraor- 
dinary bigness  as  is  Latin  America's — and  of  course 
we  include  Portuguese  Brazil  in  all  this,  the  Portu- 
guese being  even  more  "Latin"  than  the  Spaniards — 
commands  our  serious  attention,  and  specially  is  this 
true  now  that  the  world,  as  a  result  of  the  development 
in  steam  and  electricity,  has  become  a  little  neighbor- 
hood. 

We  seldom  realize  how  true  it  is,  to  digress  for  a 
while  from  our  theme,  that  the  one  time  uncomfort- 
able and  inconvenient  world  has  become  comfortable 
and  convenient.  We  forget  what  an  appalling  thing 
it  used  to  be  to  journey  to  the  tropics  in  cockle  shells. 
But  all  that  has  changed  now,  and  steam  and  elec- 
tricity have  brought  the  antipodes  together,  and,  what 
is  more  important,  it  behooves  us  to  remember  these 


THE  ROCK  WHENCE  WE  ARE  HEWN  63 

things.  We  can  go  from  New  York  to  Porto  Rico 
now,  for  example,  in  the  time  it  used  to  take  to  go 
halfway  round  little  Porto  Rico,  while  Havana, 
through  the  building  of  the  Florida  East  Coast  Ex- 
tension to  Key  West,  is  as  accessible  to  Chicago  as  is 
Houston.  Further,  South  America  is  now  being  co- 
ordinated and  connected  by  railroad  systems  so  that 
its  great  bulk  is  becoming  less  and  less  clumsy ;  and 
with  the  west  coast  of  this  great  continent  communi- 
cation has  recently  been  simplified  by  the  building  of 
the  Panama  Canal. 

To  show  the  size  of  Latin  America,  the  following 
figures  need  to  be  studied. 

REPUBLIC.  AREA  POPULATION 

Square  Miles 

Argentine  Republic 1,139,979  6,989,023 

Bolivia  708,195  2,267,935 

United  States  of  Brazil 3,218,130  20,515,000 

Chili    291,500  3,500,000 

Columbia    438,436  4,320,000 

Costa  Rica  23,000  388,266 

Cuba    44,164  2,161,662 

Dominican  Republic   19,325  673,611 

Ecuador  116,000  1,500,000 

Guatemala    48,290  1,992,000 

Haiti  10,200  2,000,000 

Honduras    46,250  553,446 

United  Mexican  States 767,097  15,063,207 

Nicaragua   49.200  600,000 

Panama    32,280  419,029 

Paraguay 171,815  800,000 

Peru   679,600  4,500.000 

Salvador    7,225  1,700.000 

Uruguay    72,210  1,042.686 

United  States  of  Venezuela 393,976  2,713,703 

7,445,872  73,699,575 

Put  beside  these  by  way  of  comparison  the  square 
mileage  and  population  of  the  United  States.     Our 


64  THE   NEW   WORLD 

land  contains  2,973,890  square  miles  and  about  95,000,- 
000  people. 

Dry  figures  that  these  are,  they  are  eloquent. 
Though  there  are  seven-ninths  as  many  people — there 
may  be  more  since  no  accurate  estimate  of  the  size  of 
the  Indian  tribes  in  Central  America  is  obtainable — 
they  have  more  than  twice  as  much  territory  to  in- 
habit. We  think  of  the  empty  spaces  in  our  own 
enormous  west  and  yet  they  are  small  beside  the  un- 
used lands  of  Latin  America. 

Nor  is  the  tale  all  told  when  one  has  shown  the 
size  of  Spanish  America,  since  in  addition  to  "bulk  its 
resources  are  huge  and — considering  the  tendency  of 
northern  civilization — are  becoming  more  and  more 
important  each  day.  Overlooking  such  non-essentials 
as  tobacco  and  cofifee  or  diamonds  and  mahogany,  con- 
sider the  matter  of  the  world's  food  supply.  It  is  as- 
serted that  the  valley  of  the  Amazon  will  eventually 
be  called  upon  to  feed  the  world.  When  all  other 
arable  lands  have  reached  their  limit  of  production  our 
descendants  will  fall  back,  we  are  assured,  on  those 
fecund  lands  on  which  food  enough  can  be  raised 
for  almost  any  imaginable  population. 

What  prouder  destiny  could  any  land  have  than  to 
become  the  world's  garden  and  farm.  In  which  con- 
nection it  might  not  be  amiss  to  quote  from  a  report 
recently  made  at  an  International  Geological  Congress, 
in  which  is  shown  among  other  facts  that  if  the  world 
continues  to  advance  along  the  lines  followed  in  the 
past  one  hundred  years,  the  future  of  the  southern 
continent  is  destined  to  be  agricultural.  The  report  * 
is  one  which  deals  with  the  coal  resources  of  the  world 
and  it  brings  out  the  following  significant  facts : 

The  relation  of  coal  to  civilization  is  apparent  from  an 
inspection  of  any  world  map.  The  heaviest  coal  producing 
countries  lead  in  civilization.    A  large  portion  of  the  wealth 

^Bulletin  of  the  American  Geographical  Society,  October,  1915,  p.  761. 


THE  ROCK  WHENCE  WE  ARE  HEWN         65 

per  capita  in  each  may  be  traced  directly  to  the  hives  of  in- 
dustry and  the  centers  of  population  that  cluster  around  the 
sites  of  their  coal  supplies.  The  factor  of  area  or  of  geo- 
graphical position  appears  overshadowed  by  the  importance 
of  that  of  coal  resources.  Belgium  is  a  case  in  point.  This 
does  not  imply,  however,  that  civilization  depends  on  coal 
entirely.  It  means  that  nineteenth  or  twentieth  century  civili- 
zation alone  is  based  in  part  on  coal  consumption.  Given 
the  discovery  of  an  economically  more  advantageous  source 
of  energy,  and  coal  will  become  as  unimportant  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  world's  commerce  as  trade  winds  in  our  day. 
The  bulk  of  the  world's  supply  of  coal  is  stored  in  the 
continental  areas  of  the  northern  hemisphere.  North  America 
and  Eurasia  contain  approximately  six-sevenths  of  the  total 
reserves.  The  fuel  is  distributed  most  abundantly  north  of 
the  20th  parallel  of  north  latitude.  This  is  not  due  so  much 
to  the  development  of  large  land  masses  in  the  northern  hemi- 
sphere as  it  is  to  the  existence  of  vast  areas  of  rocks  belong- 
ing to  the  carboniferous  period  which  are  not  well  repre- 
sented either  in  Africa  or  South  America.  A  factor  of  far- 
reaching  economic  importance  in  the  commercial  and  industrial 
relations  between  northern  and  southern  continents  is  thereby 
created.  Industrial  supremacy  of  the  northern  continents  is 
insured  as  long  as  coal  is  not  superseded  by  another  fuel  or 
new  reserves  are  not  discovered  in  the  southern  continents. 

In  a  statistical  table  which  follows  it  is  revealed 
that  while  the  estimated  coal  reserve  of  North  America 
is  5,073,431  million  tons,  that  of  South  America  is 
only  32,097  million  tons,  of  which  27,000  are  in  Colom- 
bia. On  the  present  basis  then,  the  agricultural  future 
of  the  southern  continent  is  its  only  future. 

The  student  of  sociological  problems  will  find  in 
these  facts  much  food  for  thought.  So  also  will  the 
speculative  chemist  who  is  prepared  to  combat  the 
theory  that  to  the  coal  lands  belong  the  world's  in- 
dustrial future.  Was  it  not  Lord  Kelvin  who  said 
that  he  could  imagine  a  day  when  we  would  regard 
our  present  method  of  getting  power  and  heat  from 
coal  as  absurd  and  clumsy ;  a  day  when  we  would  see 
the  sun  harnessed  and  its  energy  made  to  drive  the 
wheels  of  the  world.    And  then,  perhaps  in  a  moment 


66  THE   NEW   WORLD 

of  playfulness,  but  yet  with  an  undertone  of  serious- 
ness, he  added  that  when  that  day  came  the  highest 
priced  land  would  be,  as  it  is  now,  where  power  was 
most  easily  obtained,  which  meant  that  coal  lands  and 
equatorial  lands  would  exchange  places — on  this  basis 
the  industrial  centers  of  the  world  will  be  nearer  Brazil 
and  Sahara  than  New  York. 

Returning  from  this  dream  of  the  future  to  the 
present,  let  us  look  at  the  actual  resources  of  the 
Spanish  dominions  of  today.  In  his  recent  volume 
Professor  Shepherd  gives  us  this  resume  of  the  sub- 
ject : 

When  estimating  the  value  of  the  natural  resources  of  the 
Latin-American  states,  one  must  take  into  account  certain 
obstacles  that  lie  in  the  way  of  their  development.  There  are 
vast  stretches  of  waste  land,  especially  in  the  mountainous 
areas;  and  in  the  tropical  sections  there  are  huge  swamps 
and  miasmic  forests  as  well.  The  resources,  furthermore, 
are  often  inaccessible  because  of  poor  facilities  of  transporta- 
tion. If  railways  were  to  be  built,  the  engineering  difficulties 
presented  at  times  would  make  the  construction  so  costly  as 
to  destroy  the  possibility  of  ultimate  profit.  Despite  these 
obstacles,  the  wealth  in  mines,  forests  and  soil  is  astounding, 
and  even  now  is  only  just  beginning  to  be  made  useful  to 
mankind. 

Though  practically  all  of  the  republics  are  rich  in  mineral 
substances,  Mexico,  Colombia,  Bolivia,  Chile,  Peru  and 
southern  Brazil  are  the  chief  mining  centers.  Mexico  is 
noted  for  its  silver,  copper,  iron,  petroleum,  precious  and 
semi-precious  stones  and  gold;  Colombia,  for  its  platinum 
and  emeralds ;  Bolivia,  for  its  tin,  silver,  copper,  and  bis- 
muth; Chile,  for  its  nitrate  of  soda,  copper,  salt,  sulphur  and 
coal;  Peru,  for  its  silver,  copper  and  petroleum;  and  southern 
Brazil,  to  a  much  less  extent,  for  its  diamonds,  gold,  iron 
and  coal.  Among  the  republics  of  Central  America,  Hon- 
duras contains  probably  the  largest  mineral  deposits.  Vene- 
zuela is  richly  stored  with  asphalt.  Many  of  the  states,  par- 
ticularly Mexico  and  Peru,  are  supplied  with  excellent  mineral 
springs. 

So  far  as  forest  products  are  concerned,  nearly  every 
country  of  Latin  America  abounds  in  trees  of  the  most 
varied  utility.    Mahogany,  rosewood,  ebony  and  other  cabinet 


THE  ROCK  WHENCE  WE  ARE  HEWN  67 

woods,  and  timber  of  extraordinary  hardness  and  durability, 
are  scattered  through  the  tropical  areas.  Brazil,  however,  is 
the  one  that  possesses  the  richest  and  most  beautiful  flora. 

From  Latin  America  probably  more  economic  plants  and 
vegetable  substances  in  general  have  been  derived  than  from 
any  other  quarter  of  the  globe.  Vast  quantities  of  rubber 
are  available  in  western  and  northern  Brazil,  in  the  adjoining 
areas  of  the  Spanish-American  republics,  such  as  Peru,  Co- 
lombia, and  Bolivia,  and  in  Mexico,  where  numerous  sub- 
stitutes for  it,  like  "guayule,"  have  also  been  discovered. 
Tropical  fruits  of  every  sort,  sugar  cane,  tobacco  and  cotton 
are  profuse  in  their  distribution,  Cuba  alone  being  the  greatest 
producer  of  sugar-cane  in  the  world.  The  same  is  true  of 
several  of  the  "beverage  plants"  of  the  commoner  sort,  like 
the  coffee  of  Brazil,  Guatemala,  Costa  Rica,  Colombia  and 
Mexico;  the  cacao  of  Brazil,  Ecuador,  the  Dominican  Repub- 
lic, Venezuela  and  Haiti  and  the  "yerba,"  or  Paraguay  tea,  of 
that  country  and  the  neighboring  districts  of  the  Argentine 
Republic  and  Brazil. 

Vegetable  silk  (Paraguay),  coca  (Bolivia  and  Peru),  from 
which  cocaine  is  made  and  the  leaves  of  which  are  chewed 
by  the  natives  to  relieve  fatigue;  gums,  resins,  and  oleaginous 
plants  in  general,  sarsaparilla,  cinchona  bark,  which  is  the 
source  of  quinine  (Peru  and  Bolivia)  ;  "Peruvian"  balsam 
(Salvador),  dye-woods,  ivory  nuts  (Ecuador  and  Colombia), 
from  which  buttons,  gaming  counters  and  the  like  are  manu- 
factured; and  "chicle"  (Mexico),  which  is  the  chief  in- 
gredient in  chewing  gum,  are  among  the  vegetable  substances 
that  grow  in  great  profusion.  To  them  may  be  added  "hene- 
quen"  and  "ixtle"  (Mexico),  which  are  fibrous  plants  use- 
ful in  the  manufacture  of  cordage ;  the  vanilla  bean ;  "ma- 
guey," a  generic  name  for  some  thirty-three  species  of  cacti 
(Mexico),  which  provide  food,  drink,  and  clothing  for  the 
poorer  folk;  "toquilla"  (Ecuador),  the  straw  from  which 
Panama  hats  are  made*  many  varieties  of  spices,  bread-fruit, 
manioc,  yams,  Brazil  nuts,  essential  oils  for  the  manufacture 
of  perfumery,  and  the  wax-palm  (Brazil),  extraordinary  in 
the  number  of  its  uses. 

Cereals  of  every  description  flourish  in  the  temperate  and 
sub-tropical  areas  of  all  the  Latin-American  republics,  and 
cattle,  sheep  and  horses  thrive  on  their  grassy  savannas ;  but 
the  great  agricultural  and  grazing  areas  lie  in  southern  South 
America.  Here  the  Argentine  Republic  is  easily  foremost. 
Out  in  the  "camp,"  as  the  open  country  is  called,  lies  an 
absolutely  enormous  expanse  of  fertile  land  yielding  alfalfa, 
and  other  forage  grasses  in  practically  unlimited  quantities, 


68  THE   NEW   WORLD 

a  region  in  which  the  mild  climate  enables  cattle,  sheep  and 
horses  to  live  in  the  pastures  throughout  the  year.  Uruguay, 
its  little  neighbor  to  the  eastward,  is  also  famed  for  its  cattle, 
though  agriculture  is  encroaching  on  the  grazing  grounds. 
The  same  is  true  in  a  measure  of  southwestern  Brazil.  In 
Chile  and  the  western  part  of  the  Argentine  Republic  the 
vine  is  cultivated  with  great  success.  .   .   .^ 

Such  then  are  the  lands  which  the  Spaniards  and 
Portuguese  settled.  A  huge  division  of  the  earth's 
surface  they  make,  and  a  v^ealthy  one,  v^hich,  v^hen  all 
is  said  and  done,  has  perhaps  more  in  it  to  contribute 
to  man's  physical  necessities  than  any  other.  One  can 
not  overestimate  its  importance,  and  v^e  of  the  north 
cannot  too  quickly  come  into  close  relations  with  those 
who  possess  such  good  lands 

So  far  we  have  seen  only  the  romantic  side  of  their 
history.  We  have  heard  of  the  Conquistadores  with 
their  gruesome  thirst  for  gold ;  we  have  heard  of  the 
commencement  of  missions,  but  we  have  heard  noth- 
ing of  the  economic  and  political  and  sociological  in- 
fluences which  have  played  so  large  a  part  in  making 
the  Latin  Americans  what  they  are  to-day, — which  con- 
tributed toward  that  "bad  start"  of  which  Professor 
Ross  speaks. 

In  the  first  place  Latin  America's  development  was 
influenced  by  the  maladroitness  of  the  executive  in  the 
home  land. 

Through  a  highly  organized  system,  the  "Council  of 
the  Indies,"  as  representative  of  the  monarch,  ruled 
the  far  away  settlements.  Mechanically  the  system 
was  extraordinarily  good,  but  the  distances  being  great, 
and  the  means  of  communication  poor,  it  could  not  be 
specially  efifective.  To  anticipate  and  prevent  diffi- 
culties which  these  problems  of  distance  created,  re- 
course was  had  to  a  most  unfortunate  system  of  checks 
and  counterchecks  among  the  crown's  representatives 

*  Shepherd,  Latin  America,  pp.  117  to  121. 


THE  ROCK  WHENCE  WE  ARE  HEWN  69 

in  the  field.  To  prevent  any  viceroy  or  officer  from 
acquiring  too  much  power,  that  old  device  of  Louis 
XI's,  ''divide  et  impera"  (divide  and  rule),  was  made 
use  of.  Though  as  a  policy  it  is  hard  to  beat,  its  re- 
sults— distrust,  dishonesty  and  dissipation  of  energy — 
are  eternally  certain,  and  he  who  climbs  to  heights  on 
such  a  ladder  will  sooner  or  later  come  tumbling  down 
again.  In  carrying  out  this  policy  the  various  viceroys 
and  captain-generals  and  audiencias  and  corregidors 
were  played  ofif  against  each  other,  each  one  being 
encouraged  to  feel  that  he  could  machinate  against  the 
other  if  that  other  became  too  popular  or  prosperous. 

A  notable  example  of  this  occurred  in  the  case  of 
Cortez.  If  ever  there  was  a  faithful  servant  of  the 
crown,  if  ever  the  Spanish  king  had  a  general  whom 
he  could  trust  to  be  true  and  loyal  it  was  the  con- 
queror of  Mexico.  Had  Cortez  been  left  to  himself 
after  he  had  won  the  land  for  Spain,  if  he  had  been 
allowed  to  rule  where  he  had  conquered,  there  is 
every  reason  to  believe  he  would  have  done  good  work 
for  the  empire  and  created  a  really  strong  and  auton- 
omous province.  Under  the  policy  inaugurated  by 
Charles  V  though,  this  could  not  be,  and  the  last 
time  that  Cortez  went  back  from  Spain  to  Mexico, 
though  he  went  loaded  down  with  honors  and  the 
title  of  Marquess  of  the  Valley  of  Oaxaca  and  Captain 
General  of  New  Spain,  he  was  nevertheless  shorn  by 
a  shortsighted  monarch  of  all  his  powers.  A  civil 
governor  was  put  in  control  of  everything  not  specifi- 
cally military,  which  meant  that  the  Conquistador  him- 
self had  become  a  second  fiddle.  What  a  pity  that 
the  emperor  could  not  have  trusted  Cortez.  Am- 
bitious, and  loving  pomp  and  pageantry  as  he  did,  it 
is  still  inconceivable  that  he  would  not  have  continued 
loyal. 

We  see  unwisdom  of  the  same  kind,  to  be  sure,  in 
England's  early  colonial  policy,  and  should  attribute 


70  THE  NEW  WORLD 

these  blunders  to  the  times  more  than  to  individuals, 
but  that  does  not  affect  the  issue.  How  could  a  strong 
colony  grow  up  so  long  as  the  colonials  were  not  en- 
couraged to  respect  their  immediate  governors  ?  Each 
and  every  one  felt  that  he  could  appeal  over  the  head 
of  his  local  magistrate  to  the  home  government,  and 
that  that  appeal  would  very  likely  be  listened  to  if  his 
magistrate  happened  to  be  prospering  abundantly. 
How  could  respect  for  government  in  the  Indies  be 
expected  so  long  as  too  great  success  by  a  local  adminis- 
trator was  tantamount — so  far  as  his  treatment  by  the 
home  government  and  fellow  officials  was  concerned — 
to  treachery.  Can  we  not  see  in  this  policy  the  germ 
of  that  spirit  which  grew  and  grew  until,  when  the 
colonies  wrenched  themselves  free  and  had  governors 
of  their  own  choosing,  they  were  incapable  of  taking 
them  seriously  and  obeying  them  loyally.  The  orgy 
of  revolution  which  Latin  America  has  been  through 
in  the  last  one  hundred  years  can  in  part  be  traced  to 
that  divide  et  imp  era  policy  of  the  Spanish  monarchs. 

So  far  as  the  Laws  of  the  Indies  were  concerned, 
there  was  little  to  be  desired.  But  personalities,  not 
codes,  make  strong  nations.  Though  the  Spanish  code 
displayed  a  spirit  of  humanity  and  a  wise  regard  for 
rights  of  individuals  which  for  their  time  were  ex- 
traordinary, still  their  excellence  was  undone  by  the 
folly  of  the  Crown. 

"If  elaborate  system  and  supervision,  careful  adapta- 
tion of  means  to  ends,  diligent  nursing,  could  avail 
for  colonial  growth,"  wrote  Admiral  Mahan,  "the 
genius  of  England  has  less  of  this  systematizing  faculty 
than  the  genius  of  France;  but  England,  not  France, 
has  been  the  greater  colonizer  of  the  world.  Success- 
ful colonization  with  its  consequent  effect  upon  com- 
merce and  sea-power,  depends  essentially  upon  national 
character ;  because  colonies  grow  best  when  they  grow 
of  themselves,  naturally.     The  character  of  the  colo- 


THE  ROCK  WHENCE  WE  ARE  HEWN  71 

nist,  not  the  care  of  the  home  government,  is  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  colony's  growth."  What  follows  in  this 
chapter  is  meant  to  show  some  of  the  reasons  for  the 
insufficiency  of  character  among  the  Spanish  colonials. 

The  first  loose  bolt  in  the  Spanish  machine,  then, 
was  the  jealousy  of  the  executive.  And,  parentheti- 
cally, one  cannot  refrain  from  adding  the  executives 
were  of  a  kind  from  which  one  would  have  expected 
jealousy  and  similar  descents  to  folly.  The  tale  of 
the  reigns  of  the  Spanish  Kings  between  1600  and 
1700  is  one  long  repetition  of  blunders — blunders  which 
resulted  in  removing  Spain's  candlestick. 

It  was  Philip  II  who  was  responsible  for  starting 
Spain  downhill.  The  influence  which  he  exerted  upon 
the  empire  of  his  successors  is  fairly  unbelievable.  Had 
that  superstitious  adventurer.  Ponce  de  Leon,  brought 
home  a  draft  from  a  fountain  of  youth  and  thereby 
enabled  the  gloomy  monarch  to  rule  his  people  down  to 
the  eighteenth  century,  he  could  hardly  have  influenced 
matters  more.  As  one  reads  of  the  acts  of  Philip  III, 
Philip  IV,  and  Charles  II, — monarchs  who  were  on 
the  throne  from  the  death  of  Philip  II  in  1598  down 
to  the  year  1700,  he  sees  the  ghost  of  the  gloomy 
Philip  ever  on  the  stage. 

The  gist  of  the  matter  can  be  summed  up  in  a 
paragraph.  Philip  II  honestly  believed  himself  to  be 
the  anointed  of  God.  In  him  the  divine  right  theory 
reached — for  olden  days  at  least — its  zenith.  So  per- 
suaded was  he  of  his  personal  responsibility,  and  so 
conscientious  withal,  that  he  delegated  almost  no 
power  to  his  subordinates.  Spain's  dominion  was  vast 
and  the  number  of  things  in  which  she  was  engaged 
beyond  measure.  The  interviewing  of  ambassadors 
from  the  peoples  with  whom,  by  reason  of  the  size 
and  ramifications  of  her  international  dealings,  she  had 
to  deal,  was  enough  for  one  man — and  yet  the  Em- 
peror allowed  nothing  of  importance  to  be  done  until 


72  THE   NEW   WORLD 

he  had  personally  attended  to  it.  Often  papers  of 
great  importance  were  delayed  for  months  until  he 
could  find  time  to  look  them  over.  When  Spain  under- 
took to  subdue  England  and  the  resplendent  Armada 
was  made  ready,  rather  than  turn  that  momentous 
campaign  over  to  a  competent  leader,  Philip  put  it 
under  the  command  of  an  incompetent  whom  he  could 
control  from  his  cell  in  the  thrice  gloomy  Escorial. 

It  was  this  principle  of  personal  rule,  founded  upon 
his  conscientious  belief  that  he  and  God  were  partners, 
which  blighted  the  years  following  the  death  of  Philip. 
Had  his  successors  been  men  of  like  caliber  it  might 
have  been  different.  They  were  not  though.  They 
were  weaklings  who — irony  of  ironies — reversed  the 
policy  of  Philip  and  instead  of  delegating  nothing,  dele- 
gated everything — to  selfish  and  vicious  favorites ! 
And  that  is  where  the  trouble  arose.  The  people  had 
been  trained  to  follow  whatever  betide,  and  true  to 
their  training  they  followed  these  favorites!  Philip 
III,  son  of  Philip  II,  was  idle,  careless,  and  weak,  and 
glad  to  be  a  tool  in  the  hands  of  the  Duke  of  Lerma. 
To  the  vicious  Lerma  practically  all  the  royal  preroga- 
tives were  given,  and  for  twenty  years  he  misgoverned 
Spain.  He  was  followed  in  Philip  IV's  days  by 
Olivares,  whose  character  can  be  estimated  from  the 
fact  that  he  won  his  ascendency  over  his  monarch  by 
initiating  him,  when  a  youth,  into  the  mysteries  of  filth 
and  debauchery.  Next  came  Valenzuela  in  Charles 
IPs  time,  who  might  be  said  to  have  followed  in  the 
footsteps  of  "J^^oboam  the  son  of  Nebat,  who  made 
Israel  to  sin." 

If  ever  in  this  world  there  has  been  an  illustration 
of  the  dangers  of  one  man  rule  it  was  in  Spain.  De- 
spite his  deep  convictions,  one  can  almost  believe  that 
Philip  II  would  have  changed  his  ways  if  he  could 
have  known  what  the  results  of  his  policy  would  have 
been. 


THE  ROCK  WHENCE  WE  ARE  HEWN  73 

For  us  the  special  interest  lies  in  the  effect  of  the 
misgovernment  of  Spain  upon  the  history  of  her 
colonial  possessions.  The  favorites — Lerma  and  his 
ilk — caring  for  nothing  save  their  own  pleasure  and 
pockets,  let  the  Indies  alone  so  long  as  silver  from  the 
treasure  ships  kept  coming  their  way.  Whether 
governors  plundered  the  colonials  and  natives,  and 
misruled  them,  they  cared  not.  As  a  result,  all  the 
evils  of  the  mother  country  were  reproduced  in  the 
Indies,  and,  left  a  prey  to  such  officials  as  favoritism 
minus  intelligent  interest  provided  them  with,  they 
decreased  in  wisdom  and  stature  and  favor  with  the 
world. 

The  economic  history  of  the  Indies  must  also  be 
comprehended  if  one  is  to  understand  their  mal- 
development.  In  things  economic  the  Spaniards  were 
blind  leaders.  So  true  is  this,  that  their  history  is  the 
only  history  which  explains  itself.  As  Martin  Hume 
wrote  in  the  preface  to  his  volume  on  the  "Greatness 
and  Decay  of  Spain": 

The  mere  relation  of  the  events  of  history  adds  but  little 
to  the  stock  of  useful  knowledge  unless  it  enables  us  to 
apply  the  experience  of  the  past  to  the  conduct  of  the  present, 
and  so  to  avoid  for  our  own  time  some  of  the  errors  into 
which  previous  generations  have  fallen.  This  end  can  best 
be  attained  by  regarding  history  not  as  a  disjointed  collec- 
tion of  facts,  but  as  a  harmonious  concatenation  of  causes 
and  effects.  In  the  case  of  most  national  histories  this  is 
difficult,  because  the  actions  and  the  results  which  follow  them 
are  usually  distant  in  point  of  time,  obscured  by  side  issues 
and  complicated  by  intervening  circumstances.  It  is  other- 
wise with  the  history  of  Spain.  There  the  ordinary  observer 
may  see  the  working  of  the  process  by  which  nations  are 
ruined.  He  who  runs  may  read  the  lessons  that  unsupported 
pride  and  unwarranted  ambition  are  as  disastrous  to  nations 
as  to  men,  that  riches  gained  without  labor  produce  no  ex- 
tended or  lasting  prosperity,  that  the  true  basis  of  wealth  is 
industrial  production.  .   .   .* 

*  Hume,   Spain,  Its  Greatness  and  Decay,  introduction. 


74  THE   NEW  WORLD 

Beginning  with  the  fearful  military  expenses  needed 
to  support  the  pride  and  pretensions  of  Philip  II, 
Spain  started  upon  a  career  of  economic  folly  such  as 
the  world  has  seldom  seen.  Not  that  she  could  not 
have  met  her  debts.  She  could  have  done  so  had  her 
finances  been  wisely  handled.  But  that  is  where  the 
trouble  arose.  While  her  kings  and  favorites  were 
spending  money  like  water,  her  officials  were  making 
laws  which  little  by  little  impoverished  the  people, 
destroyed  their  industries,  discouraged  their  agricul- 
turalists, and  utterly  discounted  the  efforts  of  her 
traders.  They  killed  every  goose  which  might  have 
been  counted  on  to  lay  golden  eggs — and  they  had  lots 
of  them — and  then  after  the  geese  were  dead  they 
plucked  their  feathers.^ 

The  results  of  this  disastrous  policy  were  terrible. 
Hume  thus  describes  the  humiliating  condition  reached 
in  the  year  1601 :  ''Lerma  himself,  by  a  stroke  of 
genius,  conceived  another  theory.  It  was,  he  said,  the 
waste  of  silver  in  making  Church  and  household  plate 
which  caused  coin  to  be  so  scarce.  So  in  April,  1601, 
sudden  orders  were  sent  throughout  Spain  for  official 
inventories  to  be  made  of  every  piece  of  silver-plate 
in  private  houses  and  churches,  and  all  this  was  to  be 
kept  intact  until  orders  were  received  for  its  utilization. 
This  was  too  much.  Bishops  and  clergy  thundered 
from  the  altars  and  pulpits  against  such  sacrilege,  and 
in  August  a  humble  apology  was  given  and  the  order 
cancelled.  But  something  had  to  be  done.  The  Cortes 
now  might  vote  what  they  liked,  but  the  ruined  people 
could  not  pay  it;  and  the  next  device  was  an  appeal 
ad  misericordiam  to  bishops,  nobles,  officials,  and 
others,  to  give  what  money  and  plate  they  chose.  The 
Archbishop  of  Seville  contributed  his  plate  and  30,000 
ducats  in  money,  and  others  gave  in  proportion.    But 

1  See  for  illustrations  Hume's  Spain,  pp.  195,  271,  285,  305. 


THE  ROCK  WHENCE  WE  ARE  HEWN         75 

there  was  a  lower  depth  still.  Officers  were  appointed 
to  go  from  door  to  door  accompanied  by  the  priest 
of  each  parish,  to  beg  for  alms  for  the  King,  the  small- 
est sum  received  being  fifty  reals.  To  this  had  Spain 
fallen.  The  master  of  the  New  World  with  its  count- 
less treasures  had  not  money  to  pay  for  his  household 
servants,  or  to  set  forth  the  meals  for  his  own  table."  ^ 

Instances  of  this  kind  could  be  multiplied.  What  is 
desired  here,  though,  is  not  so  much  to  reveal  the 
poverty  of  Spain,  as  the  policy  which  made  her  poor, 
since  it  was  that  same  policy  which  was  largely  respon- 
sible for  the  economic  incompetence  which  developed 
in  the  Indies.  The  point  of  the  matter  is  this — in  their 
utterly  suicidal  endeavors  to  raise  funds  to  pay  the 
bills  created  by  their  military  ambitions,  the  rulers  of 
Spain  did  the  very  things  which  made  money  scarce. 
They  would  forbid  the  manufacture  of  this  thing  here 
and  of  that  thing  there,  until  the  land  became  almost 
empty  and  silent.  By  a  bitter  irony  of  fate  it  came 
to  pass  that  if  there  was  any  kind  of  a  tax  or  a  law 
which  would  destroy  an  industry,  they  decreed  it — and 
always,  of  course,  in  the  name  of  that  industry ! 

It  was  in  perfect  accord  with  this  policy  that  they 
sought  to  encourage  home  industries  by  prohibiting 
the  colonials  from  producing  or  manufacturing  articles 
which  could  be  produced  or  manufactured  in  Spain. 
While  it  is  true  that  the  government  and  the  Casa  de 
Contratacion  insisted  on  the  colonists'  taking  out  with 
them  seed  and  farm  implements  and  domestic  animals 
so  that  they  could  be  self-supporting,  that  ruling  was 
insufficient.  They  should  further,  if  they  desired  to 
see  the  new  land  become  strong  and  vigorous,  have 
encouraged  the  settlers  to  inaugurate  such  industries 
as  would  make  the  land  and  its  people  industrious  and 
provident.    What  they  did  do  was  exactly  the  opposite, 

*  op.  cit.,  pp.  200-201. 


76  THE   NEW   WORLD 

and  as  a  result,  the  New  World  grew  up  without  any 
ideas  of  thrift  or  economy.^ 

In  addition  to  the  foregoing  economic  blunder  the 
great  heresy  which  tacitly  proclaimed  manual  labor 
to  be  undignified  was  encouraged.  In  one  degree  or 
another  most  military-minded  peoples  are  blind  to  the 
worth  and  importance  of  work.  The  Spaniard  was 
no  exception  to  this  rule,  and  we  find  it  written  large 
in  the  books  that  the  colonizers  of  Latin  America 
thought  it  beneath  them  to  work  with  their  hands.^  The 
effect  of  this  upon  the  growing  states  was  inevitable, 
since  only  where  a  premium  is  put  upon  industry  can 
efficiency  be  expected.^ 

There  remain  to  be  treated  in  this  chapter  on 
handicaps,  two  momentous  problems,  the  first  of 
which  is  the  question  of  climate.  Some  would  have 
it  that  heat  per  se  has  an  unwholesome  influence  on 
men.  How  much  truth  is  there  in  this?  For  ex- 
ample, in  a  paper  on  Argentina  and  the  Argentines, 
read  at  a  meeting  of  the  Association  of  American 
Geographers  in  New  York  in  April,  1915,  these  words 
were  used: 

"Contrasts  strongly  distinguish  North  and  South 
America,  and  among  those  most  generally  recognized 
in  the  popular  mind  there  is  none  more  conspicuous 
than  the  stability  of  self-government  in  the  one  and  its 

*  As  a  general  example  of  this  policy,  take  the  cases  of  Peru  and 
Mexico.  There  the  trades  of  the  dyer,  the  fuller,  the  weaver,  the 
shoemaker  and  the  hatter  were  abolished  and  the  natives  compelled  to 
buy  the  products  of  those  industries  from  Spain.  This  meant  that  the 
very  clothes  they  wore  the  natives  had  to  get  from  Spain.  Again, 
grape  and  olive  growing  were  abolished  everywhere  except  in  Peru  and 
Chili,  and  these  provinces  could  not  sell  wine  or  oil  to  anv  place  to 
which  Spain  exported  them.  Trade  with  China  and  the  Philippines 
was  forbidden  as  soon  as  it  was  discovered  that  the  colonies  were  pro- 
curing from  them  things  that  could  be  made  in  Spain. 

*  It  is  interesting  in  this  connection  to  note  that  so  clearly  did  Spain's 
great  king,  Charles  III  (1759-1788)  realize  the  damage  wrought  by  the 
prevalent  idea  that  manual  labor  was  infra  dig.  that  he  issued  a  royal 
decree  in  1783  in  which  it  was  declared  that  it  was  no  degradation  tor 
hidalgos  to  engage  in  handicrafts!  After  all  that  has  been  said  about 
the  worthlessness  of  some  of  the  Spanish  kings,  it  should  at  least  be 
said  that  in  Charles  III  Spain  had  a  very  great  leader. 


THE  ROCK  WHENCE  WE  ARE  HEWN  11 

instability  in  the  other  continent.  The  causes  are 
racial  in  part ;  they  are  in  a  measure  inheritances  from 
distinct  colonial  policies ;  and  they  are  also  due  to  geo- 
graphic conditions.  The  last  unfortunately  perma- 
nent. Self-government  is  a  hardy  plant.  Like  wheat 
and  oats  it  flourishes  where  there  is  ozone  in  the  air 
and  frost." 

Again,  and  to  quote  this  time  a  distinguished  Peru- 
vian whose  characterization  of  the  Latin  peoples  must 
command  our  attention,  in  discussing  ^the  "political 
anarchy  of  the  Latin  America  land"  we  are  told, 
''there  are  a  few  republics  in  which  these  conflicts 
have  been  perpetual;  such  is  the  case  in  Central 
America  and  the  Antilles.  It  seems  as  though  the 
tropical  climate  must  favor  these  disturbances.  As- 
sassinations of  presidents,  battles  in  the  cities,  collisions 
between  factions  and  castes,  inflammatory  and  decep- 
tive rhetoric,  all  lead  one  to  suppose  that  these  equa- 
torial regions  are  inimical  to  peace  and  organization."  ^ 

Is  there  anything  in  this  idea  that  national  stability 
is  dependent  upon  plenty  of  ozone  and  frost?  Some 
political  philosophers,  following  Buckle,  are  so  sure 
that  there  is,  that  they  say  that  the  children  of  cold 
climes  will  always  have  to  help  those  who  live  where 
the  sun  shines  fiercely. 

Though  the  writer  for  his  part  does  not  believe  that 
it  is  the  heat  which  makes  the  dift'erence,  as  will  be 
pointed  out  later  on,  still  when  we  think  of  the 
matter  historically  we  are  forced  to  admit  that  its 
influence  has  in  the  past  been  unfortunate. 

This  might  perhaps  more  properly  be  called  a 
problem  of  flora  and  fauna,  since  it  is  more  with  the 
products  of  the  heat  than  with  the  heat  itself  that 
we  are  concerned.  The  warm  climate  of  the  tropics, 
in  other  words,  was  responsible  for  certain  economic 

*  Calderon,  Latin  America:  Its  Rise  and  Progress,  p.  199. 


78  THE   NEW   WORLD 

conditions  which  were  of  moment.  The  matter  can 
best   be   illustrated   by   a   hypothetical   case: 

Imagine  two  men  leaving  the  same  place  three 
hundred  years  ago,  say,  for  example,  London,  and 
emigrating,  the  one  to  the  island  of  Cuba,  the  other 
to  the  island  of  Newfoundland.  Imagine  them  settling 
down  in  such  places  for  the  rest  of  their  lives.  Would 
one  expect  their  children  to  develop  as  the  decades 
went  by  with  no  greater  differences  of  character  than 
would  have  appeared  had  they  been  brought  up  in 
adjacent  houses  back  in  England?  If  not,  what  dif- 
ferences would  one  expect? 

To  speculate  about  such  things  one  has  to  inquire 
somewhat  into  the  laws  of  supply  and  demand,  since 
life  must  be  supported  and  a  large  part  of  it  consists 
in  the  buying  and  selling  of  food  and  raiment.  Looked 
at  in  this  way,  we  speedily  realize  that  the  family 
brought  up  in  the  tropics  would  have  been  brought  up 
in  comparative  abundance,  without — that  is  the 
point, — without  any  great  amount  of  effort  on  the  part 
of  the  father.  On  the  other  hand,  he  who  had  to 
wring  a  living  from  the  niggardly  soil  of  Newfound- 
land, would  do  so  with  difficulty.  The  atmosphere  of 
the  tropical  family  would  be  one  of  ease ;  that  of  the 
other,  care  and  labor.  The  one  family,  dependent  upon 
brain  and  brawn  in  its  struggle  with  nature,  would  de- 
velop in  one  direction ;  the  other,  able  to  "get  along" 
without  undue  effort,  mental  or  physical,  would  de- 
velop in  another.  One  family  would  have  little  time 
for  leisure,  the  other  would  find  time  hanging  heavy ; 
one  would  have  the  long  winter  nights  and  the  cheer- 
less, harvestless  months  of  ice  and  snow  to  prepare 
against,  the  other  would  be  free  from  the  embarrass- 
ments and  impoverishments  of  barren  winter.  And 
so  it  goes. 

When  one  imagines  the  cumulative  effects  of  dif- 
ferences such  as  these  reaching  down  through  two  or 


THE  ROCK  WHENCE  WE  ARE  HEWN  79 

three  generations,  he  is  able  to  realize  to  a  certain 
extent  the  divergent  influences  of  the  antipodes.  A 
recent  writer  has  expressed  it  amusingly  by  asking 
what  would  have  happened  to  the  Pilgrim  fathers  if 
they  had  emigrated  to  the  regions  where  the  Indians 
were  mild-tempered,  and  nature  smiled  benignantly, 
and  no  one  had  to  work  for  a  living.^ 

Thus,  historically  considered,  one  cannot  but  see 
that  climate  and  the  resultant  soil  characteristics  in- 
fluenced the  development  of  the  Latin  world.  While 
the  soils  that  only  yielded  to  patient  labor  were  drill- 
ing those  who  settled  in  the  northern  zones  and  making 
them  hardy  and  self-reliant,  those  who  had  taken  up 
their  abode  in  the  benignant  tropics  were  receiving 
none  of  those  lessons  in  economy  and  industry  which 
men  need  for  their  welfare.  Beyond  that  point  it  is  to 
be  doubted  if  mere  heat  was  a  factor.  On  the  other 
hand  given  modern  science  and  its  ingenuity  one 
has  every  reason  to  believe  that  nowadays  the  ther- 
mometer's readings  are  of  even  less  importance.  (See 
Appendix  to  this  Chapter.) 

But  though  men  may  be  able  today  and  in  the  future 
to  disregard  the  temperature,  there  yet  remains  a 
serious  problem.  Namely,  the  absence  from  the  tropics 
of  marked  seasonal  changes.  It  is  highly  questionable 
whether  in  this  matter  Latin  America  is  not  face  to 
face  with  a  serious  situation;  whether  its  absence  of 
"weather"  is  not  a  real  handicap. 

Ii}  his  book  on   "Climate  and   Civilization"  ^   the 

*  In  this  connection  Mr.  Payne's  theory  that  the  advancement  of 
civilization  is  largely  dependent  on  the  development  of  cereals  is  inter- 
esting. Cereal  culture,  he  says,  is  in  all  infant  civilizations  of  funda- 
mental value  because  (1)  of  the  nourishment  given  by  cereals  to  the 
muscular  and  nervous  systems;  (2)  it  "alone  among  the  forms  of  food- 
production  taxes,  recompenses  and  stimulates  labor  and  ingenuity  in  an 
equal  degree."  "Regarded  as  stimulants  to  human  activity,"  he  goes 
on,  "fruits  and  roots  have  a  low  comparative  value."  It  should  be  noted 
that  fruits  and  roots  were  to  a  large  extent  the  food  of  those  who 
lived  on  the  shores  of  the  Caribbean.  Payne,  History  of  the  New 
World,    T.    353    f^. 

*  Huntington,  Climate  and  Civilization. 


8Q  THE   NEW   WORLD 

author  presents  a  most  interesting  development  of  this 
theme.  Ellsworth  Huntington  says  frankly  that  climate 
"is  not  the  cause  of  civilization,  for  that  lies  infinitely 
deeper.  Nor  is  it  the  only  or  the  most  important  con- 
dition. It  is  merely  one  of  several,  just  as  an  abundant 
supply  of  pure  water  is  one  of  the  primary  conditions 
of  health."  ^  He  then  proceeds  to  show  what  he  be- 
lieves to  be  a  favorable  climate,  and,  to  make  a  long 
story  short,  concludes  that  it  is  not  so  much  a  ques- 
tion of  temperature  as  it  is  of  variation.  "Under 
proper  conditions,"  he  says,^  "a  relatively  high  tempera- 
ture is  not  particularly  harmful  provided  it  does  not 
go  to  undue  extremes."  On  the  other  hand  "changes 
of  temperature  from  day  to  day  are  of  great  impor- 
tance." He  cites  a  multitude  of  facts  to  show  that  it 
is  the  changes  which  come  from  day  to  day  and  from 
season  to  season  which  go  to  produce  the  energy  which 
makes   for  progress  and  prosperity.^ 

Whether  or  not  we  accept  Professor  Huntington's 
hypothesis,  we  cannot  but  be  impressed  with  its  force. 
It  certainly  would  seem  to  have  the  indorsement  of 
many  who  have  found  that  it  is  not  the  heat  of  the 
tropics  which  "gets  on  their  nerves"  but  the  everlasting 
sameness.* 

So  much  for  the  large  question  of  climate.  Let  us 
turn  to  another  and  even  more  difficult  subject,  the 
matter  of  miscegenation. 

When  the  Conquistadores  came  over  they  brought 
with  them  but  few  of  the  gentler  sex.    Camps  were  no 

*  op.  cit.,  p.  9. 

'  Op.  cit.,  p.  269. 

'  Professor  Huntington  attributes  climatic  variations  to  storms  and 
shows  how  those  parts  of  the  world  which  are  by  general  consent 
admitted  to  be  the  most  "civilized"  are  those  which  are  within  the 
track  of  the  world's  storms.  ^ 

*  Mr.  Fiske,  in  his  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist,  p.  189,  and  in  the 
whole  of  the  chapter  on  "Sociology  and  Hero  Worship,"  contends 
strongly  that  ideals  rather  than  physical  environment  influence  civiliza- 
tion. Of  course  they  do,  but  one  is  inclined  to  believe  that  Fiske 
would  at  least  go  as  far  as  Huntington  and  admit  the  partial  influence 
of   climate. 


THE  ROCK  WHENCE  WE  ARE  HEWN  81 

place  for  women.  Intermarriage  with  the  natives  began 
at  once  and  continued  through  three  hundred  years 
until  a  condition  unparallelled  elsewhere  has  arisen.  It 
is  not  a  subject  though  upon  which  a  North  American 
is  competent  to  speak;  we  are  too  apt  to  believe  in 
the  infallibility  of  our  own  judgment.  For  every  rea- 
son we  should  in  this  instance  let  a  Latin  American 
guide  us.  The  following  deliverance  of  Senor  Calderon 
is  therefore  presented.^ 

The  three  races  [he  writes],  Iberian,  Indian,  and  African, 
— united  by  blood,  form  the  population  of  South  America. 
In  the  United  States  union  with  the  aborigines  is  regarded 
by  the  colonist  with  repugnance;  in  the  South  miscegenation 
is  a  great  national  fact;  it  is  universal.  The  Chilian  oligarchy 
has  kept  aloof  from  the  Araucanians,  but  even  in  that  country 
unions  between  whiter  and  Indians  abound.  Mestizos  are  the 
descendants  of  whites  and  Indians;  mulattos,  the  children  of 
Spaniards  and  negroes;  zambos,  the  sons  of  negroes  and 
Indians.  Besides  these  there  are  a  multitude  of  social  sub- 
divisions. On  the  Pacific  coast  Chinese  and  negroes  have 
interbred. 

It  is  always  the  Indian  that  prevails,  and  the  Latin 
democracies  are  mestizo  or  indigenous.  The  ruling  class 
has  adopted  the  costume,  the  usages,  and  the  laws  of  Europe, 
but  the  population  which  forms  the  national  mass  is  Quechua, 
Aymara,  or  Aztec.  ...  Of  the  total  population  of  Peru  and 
Ecuador  the  white  element  only  attains  to  the  feeble  propor- 
tion of  6  per  cent.,  while  the  Indian  element  represents  70  per 
cent,  of  the  population  of  these  countries,  and  50  per  cent,  in 
Bolivia.  In  Mexico  the  Indian  is  equally  in  the  majority,  and 
we  may  say  that  there  are  four  Indian  nations  on  the  con- 
tinent:   Mexico,  Peru,  Ecuador,  and  Bolivia. 

In  countries  where  the  pure  native  has  not  survived,  the 
mestizos  abound;  they  form  the  population  of  Colombia, 
Chili,  and  Paraguay;  in  this  latter  country  Guarani  is  spoken 
much  more  frequently  than  Spanish.  The  true  American 
of  the  South  is  the  mestizo,  the  descendant  of  Spaniards  and 
Indians;  but  this  new  race,  which  is  almost  the  rule  from 
Mexico  to  Buenos  Ayres,  is  not  always  a  hybrid  product. 
The  warlike  peoples,  like  those  of  Paraguay  and  Chili,  are 
descended  from  Spaniards,  Araucanians,  and  Guaranis.     En- 

*  Calderon,  Latin  America:  Its  Rise  and  Progress,  p.  356  ff. 


«2  THE   NEW   WORLD 

ergetic  leaders  have  been  found  among  the  mestizos;  Paez 
in  Venezuela,  Castilla  in  Peru,  Diaz  in  Mexico,  and  Santa- 
Cruz  in  Bolivia.  An  Argentine  anthropologist,  Seiior  Ayarr- 
agaray,  says  that  "the  primary  mestizo  is  inferior  to  his  Euro- 
pean progenitors,  but  at  the  same  time  he  is  often  superior 
to  his  native  ancestors."  .  .  .  He  learns  Spanish,  assimilates 
the  manners  of  a  new  and  superior  civilization,  and  forms 
the  ruling  caste  at  the  bar  and  in  politics.  .    .    . 

One  may  say  that  the  admixture  of  the  prevailing  strains 
virith  black  blood  has  been  disastrous  for  these  democracies. 
In  applying  John  Stuart  Mill's  law  of  concomitant  variations 
to  the  development  of  Spanish  America  one  may  determine 
a  necessary  relation  between  the  numerical  proportion  of 
negroes  and  the  intensity  of  civilization.  Wealth  increases 
and  mternal  order  is  greater  in  the  Argentine,  Uruguay,  and 
Chili,  and  it  is  precisely  in  these  countries  that  the  propor- 
tion of  negroes  has  always  been  low ;  they  have  disappeared 
in  the  admixture  of  European  races.  In  Cuba,  San  Domingo, 
and  some  of  the  republics  of  Central  America,  and  certain 
of  the  states  of  the  Brazilian  Confederation,  where  the  chil- 
dren of  slaves  constitute  the  greater  portion  of  the  popula- 
tion, internal  disorders  are  continual.  A  black  republic, 
Haiti,  demonstrates  by  its  revolutionary  history  the  political 
incapacity  of  the  negro  race. 

The  mulatto  and  the  zambo  are  the  true  American  hybrids. 
.  .  .  The  inferior  elements  of  the  races  which  unite  are  evi- 
dently combined  in  their  offspring.  It  is  observed  also  that 
both  in  the  mulattos  and  the  zambos  certain  internal  contra- 
dictions may  be  noted;  their  will  is  weak  and  uncertain,  and 
is  dominated  by  instinct  and  gross  and  violent  passions.  The 
invasion  of  negroes  affected  all  the  Iberian  colonies  where,  to 
replace  the  outrageously  exploited  Indian,  African  slaves  were 
imported.  In  Brazil,  Cuba,  Panama,  Venezuela,  and  Peru  this 
caste  forms  a  high  proportion  of  the  total  population.  In 
Brazil  15  per  cent,  of  the  population  is  composed  of  negroes, 
without  counting  the  immense  number  of  mulattos  and  zam- 
bos. Bahia  is  half  an  African  city.  In  Rio  de  Janeiro  the 
negroes  of  pure  blood  abound.  In  Panama,  the  full-blooded 
Africans  form  10  per  cent,  of  the  population.  Between  1759 
and  1803  642,000  negroes  entered  Brazil;  between  1792  and 
1810  Cuba  received  89,000.  These  figures  prove  the  formid- 
able influence  of  the  former  slaves  in  modern  America.  But 
they  are  revenged  for  their  enslavement  in  that  their  blood 
is  mingled  with  that  of  their  masters.  As  the  Indian  could 
not  work  in  the  tropics  black  immigration  was  directed  prin- 
cipally upon  these  regions,   and   the   enervating  climate,   the 


THE  ROCK  WHENCE,  WE  ARE  HEWN  83 

indiscipline  of  the  mulatto,  and  the  weakness  of  the  white 
element  have  contributed  to  the  decadence  of  the  Equatorial 
nations.  ... 

The  zambos  have  created  nothing  in  America.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  robust  mestizo  populations,  the  Mamelucos 
of  Brazil,  the  Cholos  of  Peru  and  Bolivia,  the  Rotos  of  Chili, 
descendants  of  Spaniards  and  the  Guarani  Indians,  are  dis- 
tinguished by  their  pride  and  virility,   .    .    . 

The  European  established  in  America  becomes  a  Creole; 
his  is  a  new  race,  the  final  product  of  secular  unions.  He 
is  neither  Indian,  nor  black,  nor  Spaniard.  The  castes  are 
confounded  and  have  formed  an  American  stock,  in  which 
we  may  distinguish  the  psychological  traits  of  the  Indian  and 
the  negro,  while  the  shades  of  skin  and  forms  of  skull  reveal 
a  remote  intermixture.  If  all  the  races  of  the  New  World 
were  finally  to  unite,  the  Creole  would  be  the  real  American. 

He  is  idle  and  brilliant.  There  is  nothing  excessive  either 
in  his  ideals  or  his  passions;  all  is  mediocre,  measured,  har- 
monious. His  fine  and  caustic  irony  chills  his  more  exuber- 
ant enthusiasms;  he  triumphs  by  means  of  laughter.  He  loves 
grace,  verbal  elegance,  quibbles  even,  and  artistic  form;  great 
passions  or  desires  do  not  move  him.  In  religion  he  is 
skeptical,  indifferent,  and  in  politics  he  disputes  in  the  Byzan- 
tine manner.  No  one  could  discover  in  him  a  trace  of  his 
Spanish  forefather,  stoical  and  adventurous. 

But  is  unity  possible  with  such  numerous  castes?  Must 
we  not  wait  for  the  work  of  many  centuries  before  a  clearly 
American  population  be  formed?  The  admixture  of  Indian, 
European,  mestizo,  and  mulatto  blood  continues.  How  form 
a  homogeneous  race  of  these  varieties?  There  will  be  a 
period  of  painful  unrest;  American  revolutions  reveal  the 
disequilibrium  of  men  and  races.  Miscegenation  often  pro- 
duces types  devoid  of  all  proportion,  either  physical  or  moral. 

The  resistance  of  neo-Americans  to  fatigue  and  disease 
is  considerably  diminished.  In  the  seething  retort  of  the 
future  the  elements  of  a  novel  synthesis  combine  and  grow 
yet  more  complex.  If  the  castes  remain  divided  there  will 
be  no  unity  possible  to  oppose  a  probable  invasion.  "Three 
conditions  are  necessary,"  says  Mr.  Gustave  Le  Bon,  "before 
races  can  achieve  fusion  and  form  a  new  race,  more  or  less 
hornogeneous.  The  first  of  these  conditions  is  that  the  races 
subjected  to  the  process  of  crossing  must  not  be  too  inequal 
in  number;  the  second,  that  they  must  not  differ  too  greatly 
in  character;  the  third,  that  they  must  be  for  a  long  time 
subjected  to  an  identical  environment." 

Examining  the  mixed  peoples  of  America  in  conformity 


84  THE  NEW  WORLD 

with  these  principles  we  see  that  the  Indian  and  the  negro 
are  greatly  superior  to  the  whites  in  numbers;  the  pure 
European  element  does  not  amount  to  10  per  cent,  of  the 
total  population.  In  Brazil  and  the  Argentine  there  are  num- 
bers of  German  and  Italian  immigrants,  but  in  other  countries 
the  necessary  stream  of  invasion  of  superior  races  does  not 
exist.  .         .  . 

We  have  indicated  the  profound  difference  which  divides 
the  bold  Spaniard  from  the  negro  slave;  we  have  said  that 
the  servility  of  the  Indian  race  contrasts  with  the  pride^  of 
the  conquerors;  that  is  to  say,  that  the  mixture  of  rival 
castes,  Iberians,  Indians,  and  negroes,  has  generally  had  dis- 
astrous consequences.  Perhaps  we  may  except  the  fortunate 
combinations  of  mestizo  blood  in  Chili,  southern  Brazil, 
Mexico,  Colombia,  Peru,  and  Bolivia.  Finally,  the  territory 
has  not  yet  exercised  a  decisive  influence  upon  the  races 
in  contact.  The  modern  Frenchman  and  Anglo-Saxon  are 
born  of  the  admixture  of  ancient  races  subjected  for  cen- 
turies to  the  influences  of  the  soil.  The  great  invasions  which 
modified  the  traditional  stock  took  place  a  thousand  years 
ago;  they  explain  the  terrible  struggles  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
The  new  American  type  has  not  so  long  a  history. 

In  short,  none  of  the  conditions  established  by  the  French 
psychologists  are  realized  by  the  Latin-American  democracies, 
and  their  populations  are  therefore  degenerate.   .    .    . 

This  retrogression  constitutes  a  very  serious  menace.  In 
South  America  civilization  is  dependent  upon  the  numerical 
predominance  of  the  victorious  Spaniard,  on  the  triumph  of 
the  white  man  over  the  mulatto,  the  negro,  and  the  Indian. 
Only  a  plentiful  European  immigration  can  re-establish  the 
shattered  equilibrium  of  the  American  races.  In  the  Argen- 
tine the  cosmopolitan  alluvium  has  destroyed  the  negro  and 
mitigated  the  Indian.  A  century  ago  there  were  20  per  cent, 
of  Africans  in  Buenos  Ayres;  the  ancient  slave  has  now  dis- 
appeared, and  mulattos  are  rare.  In  Mexico,  on  the  other 
hand,  in  1810  the  Europeans  formed  a  sixth  part  of  the 
population;  to-day  they  do  not  form  more  than  a  twentieth 
part. 

It  would  not  be  fair  to  Sefior  Calderon  to  take  this 
passage  from  his  book  without  adding  that  he  is  no 
pessimist  about  his  people's  future.  True  scientist 
that  he  is,  he  refuses  to  becloud  the  issue  and  conceal 
one  of  the  grave  problems  by  which  his  Latin  American 


THE  ROCK  WHENCE  WE  ARE  HEWN  85 

world  is  confronted.  The  problem  is  there,  and  it  must 
be  faced  courageously.  And  courageously  he  does  con- 
front it,  and  may  we  add  that  we  believe  that  his 
great  people  will  with  God's  help  rise,  as  we  of  the 
north  hope  to  rise,  above  the  turmoil  and  din  of  diffi- 
culties and  become  a  great  and  glorious  race  able  to 
bear  not  only  their  own  but  others'  burdens. 

Appendix  to  Chapter  III 

Some  writers  deny  that  the  white  man  could  have 
flourished  or  ever  can  flourish  in  lower  latitudes.  In 
his  much  criticized  volume  on  "The  Expansion  of 
Races,"  ^  Dr.  Woodruff  has  a  chapter  called  the  *'Myth 
of  Acclimatization,"  wherein  he  lays  it  down  as  a  law 
that  the  white  man  cannot  live  in  the  tropics.    He  says : 

The  history  of  attempts  of  white  men  to  colonize  in  the 
tropics  has  been  a  very  sad  one.  So  many  failures  have 
resulted  that  it  is  now  generally  acknowledged  to  be  impos- 
sible. White  men  might  live  anywhere  on  earth,  perhaps,  if 
they  knew  how  to  protect  themselves.  They  can  live  under 
the  ocean  in  a  diving  bell  for  a  while,  but  that  does  not 
mean  acclimatization  to  a  fish's  environment. 

A  great  deal  of  the  past  mortality  in  the  tropics  has  been 
due  to  infections,  but  since  we  have  learned  how  to  escape 
them,  the  death-rate  has  been  diminished,  though  not  so 
very  greatly,  for  as  soon  as  an  Englishman  in  India  or  an 
American  in  the  Philippines,  begins  to  break  down,  he  is 
sent  home.  Our  army  statistics  place  these  cases  with  the 
home  troops.  ^  Some  of  our  tuberculosis,  for  instance,  arises 
in  the  Philippines  and  the  deaths  occur  in  the  United  States. 
This  reduction  of  the  death-rate  in  the  tropics  has  given 
rise  to  a  widespread  opinion  that  acclimatization  is  possible, 
and  it  seems  an  almost  hopeless  task  to  convince  people  of 
the  truth.  ^  To  dodge  or  hide  from  the  causes  of  death  is 
the  necessity  of  the  well-housed  white  man,  but  the  tropical 
native  resiststhe  same  dangers  which  would  kill  Northern 
types.  That  is,  a  white  man  cannot  safely  do  manual  labor 
in  the  open — the  test  of  acclimatization.  Even  with  all  his 
care,  his  children  deteriorate  unless  sent  North. 

^  Woodruff,    The   Expansion   of   Races.   Chap.    XVI. 


86  THE   NEW   WORLD 

The  sanitation  of  Panama  has  so  completely  removed 
causes  of  death  that  thousands  are  now  working  at  places 
formerly  considered  unhabitable,  and  the  death-rate  has 
been  so  greatly  reduced  that  it  is  said  to  be  a  heahhier 
place  than  New  York.  Yet,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  death- 
rate  is  kept  down  by  sending  home  all  who  cannot  recover 
there,  and,  indeed,  many  do_  die  after  they  come  home  sick. 
No  "colony"  can  survive  if  it  must  send  its  invalids  away  to 
save  their  lives.  Indeed,  it  cannot  afford  such  expenses  as 
those  needed  in  Panama  to  keep  the  workmen  alive,  and  for 
that  very  reason  it  is  generally  acknowledged  that  tropical 
"colonies"  will  always  be  unsanitary  except  when  a  rich 
Northern  nation  supplies  the  funds.  No  little  community 
can  support  the  enormous  sanitary  force  needed  in  Panama, 
for  instance. 

Whether  or  not  Dr.  WoodrufiF  is  correct  in  this 
matter  we  cannot  say.  Opposed  to  him  are  some  great 
authorities.  In  an  address  delivered  at  St.  Louis  in 
June,  1910,  Dr.  William  C.  Gorgas — the  man  who 
made  the  Panama  Canal  possible  by  making  the  district 
sanitary — said : 

These  figures  prove  that  in  the  case  of  the  unacclimated 
foreigner,  women  and  children,  as  well  as  men,  health  con- 
ditions have  been  so  changed  at  Panama  that  one  can  live 
about  as  well  here  as  in  the  healthy  parts  of  the  United 
States.  That  in  the  case  of  the  native  and  negro,  who  make 
up  the  bulk  of  the  total  population,  his  sanitary  surroundings 
have  been  so  changed  that  he  now  enjoys  at  Panama  about 
the  same  degree  of  health  as  the  ordinary  inhabitant  of 
the  United  States.  If  this  can  be  accomplished  at  Panama, 
the  same  may  be  accomplished  anywhere  else  in  the  tropics. 

In  this  discussion  I  believe  that  I  have  shown  that  the 
Caucasian  native  of  the  United  States  is  at  present  living  in 
large  numbers  in  the  most  unhealthy  locality  in  the  tropics 
doing  the  same  out-of-door  labor  that  he  did  at  home.  But 
the  object  lesson  will  do  little  good  unless  at  the  same  time 
we  can  show  that  the  expense  of  such  sanitation  is  within 
reasonable  limits. ^ 

*  Address  of  the  President  of  the  American  Society  of  Tropical  Medi- 
cine at  St.  Louis,  June,  1910. 


CHAPTER   IV 
NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES 

INTRODUCTION 

At  the  close  of  the  Spanish- American  War  in  1898, 
Bishop  Potter  in  addressing  his  Diocesan  Convention 
gave  voice  to  the  opinion  of  many  of  our  prominent 
citizens  as  follows: 

Never  was  the  situation  more  critical  or  the  need  of  our 
common  work  for  Christ  more  urgent.  .  .  .  The  nation  has 
had  much,  during  the  past  few  months,  to  blind  and  intoxi- 
cate it.  It  has  won  an  easy  victory  over  an  effete  and  de- 
crepit adversary,  in  which  no  splendors  of  individual  heroism, 
nor  triumphs  of  naval  skill — and  in  these  we  may  indulge  a 
just  pride — ought  to  blind  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  we  have 
had  a  very  easy  task  against  a  very  feeble  foe.  And  now, 
with  unexpected  fruits  of  victory  in  our  hands,  what,  men 
are  asking  us,  are  we  going  to  do  with  them?  Nay,  rather, 
the  solemn  question  is:  What  are  they  going  to  do  with  us? 
Upon  what  wild  course  of  so-called  imperialism  are  they 
going  to  launch  a  people,  many  of  whom  are  dizzy  already 
with  the  dream  of  colonial  gains,  and  who  expect  to  repeat 
in  distant  islands  some  such  history  as  our  conquered  enemy 
wrote  long  ago  in  blood  and  plunder  in  her  colonies  here 
and  in  South  America. 

At  such  a  time,  as  never  before,  the  Church  of  God  is 
called  upon,  in  the  pulpit  and  by  every  agency  at  her  com- 
mand, to  speak  the  words  of  truth  and  soberness,  and  to 
reason  of  righteousness,  temperance  and  a  judgment  to 
come — a  judgment  for  nations  as  well  as  individuals — till 
impetuosity  is  sobered  and  chastened ;  and  until  a  people  in 
peril  of  being  wrecked  upon  an  untried  sea  can  be  made 
to  pause  and  think.  The  things  that  this  community  and  this 
nation  alike  supremely  need  are  not  more  territory,  more 
avenues  of  trade,  more  subject  races  to  prey  upon,  but  a 

87 


88  THE   NEW   WORLD 

dawning  consciousness  of  what,  in  individual  and  in  national 
life,  are_  a  people's  indispensable  moral  foundations — those 
great  spiritual  forces  on  which  alone  men  and  nations  are 
built.i 

Again  a  year  later,  while  the  strife  between  those 
who  upheld  our  policy  of  annexing  new  lands  and 
those  who  opposed  it  was  still  at  its  height,  he  said 
at  the  Church  Congress  in  Minneapolis: 

It  would  seem  at  least  reasonable  that  the  conquering  or 
purchasing  republic  should  inaugurate  its  relations  to  the 
new  possessions  by  some  conference  with  its  dominant  people. 
But  no.  ^  Its  first  word  is  subjection,  its  first  demand  sur- 
render,_  its  first,  second  and  third  conditions  are.  We  will 
recognize  nobody,  we  will  treat  with  nobody,  we  alone  will 
dictate  all  the  terms.2 

The  question  as  to  whether  our  government  was 
stultifying  itself  or  not  in  "annexing"  new  territory 
was  a  century  old.  The  Federalist  party  had  at- 
tacked the  annexation  of  Louisiana,  alleging  that  it 
was  unconstitutional  from  every  point  of  view.  Jef- 
ferson and  the  Republicans  had  replied  that  the  power 
to  make  treaties  implied  a  power  to  annex  new  lands, 
as  did  also  the  power  to  regulate  territory;  and  so 
the  argument  went  on.  But  whether  the  one  or  the 
other  was  right  does  not  affect  us  since  the  treaty 
whereby  Louisiana  was  annexed  was  ratified  on 
December  20,  1803. 

Probably  the  opponents  of  expansion  have  been 
more  logical  than  its  advocates,  but  the  people  have 
apparently  approved  the  acts  of  the  illogical  legislators 
and  the  nation  has  kept  on  enlarging.  From  the  Atlantic 
to  the  Pacific  the  boundaries  have  been  increased  until 
now  there  is  little  more  on  the  North  American  con- 
tinent that  we  could — or  would — logically  or  illogically 
annex. 

*  Hodges,  Henry  Codman  Potter,  p.  314. 
»0p.  cit.,  p.  315. 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  89 

"At  least/*  thought  the  anti-expansionists,  after 
Alaska  had  been  purchased,  "those  who  would  load 
us  down  with  new  burdens  have  reached  their  limit. 
There  is  nothing  more  that  they  can  lay  their  hands 
upon."  But  their  day-dream  was  rudely  disturbed 
in  August,  1898,  when  the  flag  was  raised  over  Hawaii. 
The  next  shock  came,  when,  on  December  10th  of  the 
same  year,  Spain  ceded  Porto  Rico  and  the  Philip- 
pines to  us.  And  the  last  blow  fell  in  February,  1904, 
when  the  Panama  Canal  Convention  was  signed, 
whereby  a  strip  of  land  ten  miles  wide  across  the 
Isthmus  of  Panama  came  into  our  possession. 

Thus,  for  better  or  worse,  we  have  gone  ahead  and 
today  Congress  has  to  legislate  not  only  for  forty- 
eight  states,  but  also,  if  indirectly,  for  parts  of  the 
old  Spanish  Dominions. 

Obviously  this  is  no  place  to  discuss  the  Philip- 
pines or  Hawaii;  rather  is  it  our  task  to  learn  some- 
thing about  those  portions  of  Latin  America  which  the 
zeal  of  the  expansionists  has  brought  under  our  control. 


90  THE   NEW   WORLD 


PORTO    RICO 

There  is  shown  today  in  the  town  of  Aguadilla,  at 
the  northwestern  corner  of  Porto  Rico,  a  spring 
whereat  Columbus  once  filled  his  water  casks.  It 
was  during  the  explorer's  second  voyage  that  he  made 
that  visit,  but  since  he  was  in  search  of  something 
more  marketable  than  water,  he  never  repeated  it. 

The  only  famous  member  of  the  Conquistador  group 
who  ever  lived  on  Borinquen — the  ancient  name  for 
the  island — was  Ponce  de  Leon.  To  this  day  is  shown 
the  house  he  built  in  San  Juan. 

When  the  tourist  is  shown  the  powerful  Morro 
Castle  which  guards  the  entrance  to  the  harbor  of 
San  Juan,  he  is  told  that  it  never  pulled  down  its  flag. 
This,  in  a  measure,  describes  the  history  of  Porto 
Rico  as  a  Spanish  province.  Though  the  French  priva- 
teers and  Sir  John  Hawkins,  Sir  Francis  Drake  and 
Lord  Cumberland  and  others  in  vain  tried  to  capture 
the  city  of  San  Juan,  they  never  succeeded.  For  four 
hundred  years  nobody  had  ever  shaken  the  hold  of 
the  Spaniards  on  the  island.  The  Indians  were  not 
vigorous  enough  to  dispute  it  with  their  conquerors ;  the 
English  and  the  Dutch  and  the  French  found  Morro 
impregnable.  In  1898  the  American  navy  half- 
heartedly shelled  the  town,  but  the  surrender  of  it  and 
of  the  island  came  as  a  result  of  the  treaty  of  Paris 
rather  than  from  a  fear  of  gun  fire.  Not  that  it 
could  not  have  been  captured,  but  it  just  did  not  turn 
out  that  way,  and  the  little  fortress'  record  remained 
intact. 

Though  the  actual  treaty  whereby  the  island  was 
ceded  to  the  United  States  was  not  signed  till  December 
10,  1898,  the  flag  was  raised  in  the  preceding  August. 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  91 

A  military  form  of  government  was  then  established 
which  held  sway  until  April  12,  1900,  when  the  Organic 
Act,  establishing  a  civil  government,  was  passed  by 
Congress. 

In  accordance  with  this  act  the  Hon.  Charles  H. 
Allen  was  made  governor.  To  cooperate  with  the 
executive  officer  there  was  created  a  legislature  com- 
posed of  two  houses, — an  upper  house  consisting  of 
six  Americans,  who  were  also  heads  of  the  govern- 
ment departments,  and  a  lower  house,  the  members  of 
which  were  the  thirty-five  Porto  Ricans  elected  thereto 
by  their  own  people.  In  the  early  years,  under  the  new 
order,  several  changes  were  made  in  this  organization, 
and  today  it  is  as  follows: 

The  governor  is  appointed  by  the  President  of  the 
United  States  for  a  four  years'  term ;  in  him  is  vested 
the  power  of  veto.  The  Executive  Council,  or  upper 
house,  also  appointed  by  the  President,  is  made  up 
of  the  six  American  department  heads  and  five  Porto 
Ricans.  Their  term  of  office  is  also  four  years.  The 
House  of  Delegates  still  consists  of  thirty-five  mem- 
bers, five  from  each  of  the  seven  electoral  districts, 
elected  by  the  people  for  two  years. 

The  judiciary  comprises  an  attorney-general  and 
staff,  and  a  United  States  Court  appointed  by  the 
President,  a  Supreme  Court  of  five  members,  also  ap- 
pointed by  the  President,  seven  District  Courts  ap- 
pointed by  tlie  Governor,  and  thirty-four  Municipal 
Courts,  the  judges  and  officials  of  which  are  elected  by 
the  people;  and  fifty-nine  justices  of  the  peace,  ap- 
pointed by  the  Governor. 

Of  the  island  thus  annexed  by  the  United  States 
Government  nothing  superlative  can  be  said.  It  is 
neither  so  large  nor  so  rich,  nor  so  well  provided  with 
harbors,  as  are  Cuba  and  Santo  Domingo.  It  has  an 
area  of  3,606  square  miles,  and  had  a  population  ac- 
cording to  the  official  estimate  of  1914  of  1,184,489. 


92  THE   NEW   WORLD 

Of  these  the  colored  population  forms  thirty-five  per 
cent.  Sixty-three  per  cent,  of  the  islanders  are  en- 
gaged in  agriculture,  fisheries  and  mining;  twenty-one 
per  cent,  in  domestic  service ;  eight  per  cent,  in  manu- 
facturing industries, — in  sugar  mills,  and  cigar  fac- 
tories ;  eight  per  cent,  in  trade  and  industry.  Accord- 
ing to  the  statistics  of  1899  over  eighty-three  per  cent, 
of  the  population  could  neither  read  nor  write. 

The  most  hopeful  and  valuable  work  carried  on  by 
the  new  government  is  the  educational.  In  1899  the 
entire  school  system  was  reorganized  and  education 
made  compulsory.  Gradually,  in  all  parts  of  the  island, 
schools  have  been  built.  High  schools  are  housed  in 
fine  substantial  concrete  buildings  in  the  larger  towns. 
At  Fajardo  the  writer  saw  an  edifice  of  which  any  of 
our  cities  in  the  States  might  be  proud.  In  the  smaller 
centers  will  be  found  dignified  buildings,  such,  for 
example,  as  the  charming  one  just  erected  at  Carolina. 
Out  in  the  country,  on  the  carretera  or  country  roads, 
are  smaller  buildings  wherein  the  children  of  the  farm- 
ers learn  their  A  B  Cs.  Always  in  front  of  these 
schools  one  sees  the  flag  waving  as  a  sign  and  symbol 
of  that  power  which  has  taken  under  its  kindly  wing 
the  upbringing  of  Porto  Ricans. 

Writing  about  the  schools,  Bishop  Colmore  says: 

The  public  school  system  as  a  direct  result  of  the  Ameri- 
can occupation,  will  be  of  immense  value  to  the  people. 
And  as  a  proof  of  the  appreciation  of  this  institution  on 
the  part  of  the  people,  one  need  only  point  to  the  fact  that 
there  are  many  hundreds  of  applications  which  the  school 
authorities  are  unable  to  accept,  and  this  notwithstanding 
the  fact  that  no  child  under  eight  years  is  accepted  in  the 
schools. 

A  very  healthful  condition  is  evident  in  the  adoption  of 
athletics,  especially  the  game  of  baseball,  which  has  been 
taken  up  with  much  enthusiasm.  From  this  game  the  youth 
will  obtain  more  than  physical  benefit,  since  by  the  observa- 
tion of  the  rules  of  play,  the  character  will  be  strengthened 
in    self-control,    honor,    truthfulness    and    obedience   to    dis- 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  93 

cipline,  and  the  excitable  Latins  will  learn  how  to  get  wrought 
up  and  yet  keep  their  heads,  how  to  be  beaten  or  victorious — 
without  taking  it  personally. 

There  were  4,330  common  schools  in  1914  with  207,- 
010  pupils  enrolled,  and  a  goodly  number  of  kinder- 
gartens and  night  schools.  At  the  apex  of  this  system 
is  the  University  of  Porto  Rico  at  Rio  Piedras,  a 
suburb  some  seven  miles  to  the  south  of  San  Juan. 
In  its  various  departments,  as  yet  in  their  infancy, 
leaders  are  being  trained. 

In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  prosperity  of  Porto 
Rico  is  largely  dependent  upon  its  agriculture,  many 
think  that  the  most  important  educational  work  is 
that  being  done  at  the  agricultural  school  at  Mayaguez. 
It  is  stated  that,  since  the  land  is  not  now  being  scien- 
tifically handled,  unless  a  change  comes  breakers  are 
ahead.  For  example,  there  are  large  sugar  plantations 
which  are  not  beginning  to  be  operated  economically; 
there  are  lands  now  used  for  one  kind  of  product 
which  should  be  used  for  another;  there  are  places 
where  intensive  cultivation  should  replace  the  present 
extravagant  method. 

While  these  things  can  be  said  with  equal  force  of 
many  districts  of  the  United  States,  the  matter  is  not 
so  urgent  here.  It  is  largely  a  question  of  density  of 
population.  In  a  speech  made  at  the  Mohonk  Confer- 
ence in  September,  1915,  the  present  governor  of  Porto 
Rico,  the  Hon.  Arthur  Yager,  asserted  that  the  chief- 
est  of  the  island's  problems  was  overpopulation.  He 
even  went  so  far  as  to  advocate  emigration  to  Santo 
Domingo  as  the  best  solution  to  the  difficulty.  When 
it  is  remembered  that  there  are  325  people  to  the  square 
mile  in  Porto  Rico,  as  against  336  to  the  same  area 
in  Japan,  and  that  the  latter  people  have  been  forced 
to  resort  to  emigration,  the  gravity  of  the  issue  will 
be  seen.  The  relation  between  this  population  factor 
and  agricultural  education  is  self-evident,  but  at  best 


94  THE   NEW   WORLD 

intensive  cultivation  can  only  postpone  the  day  when 
something  radical  must  be  done;  such  at  least  is  the 
opinion  of  the  present  governor. 

As  to  the  character  of  the  Porto  Rican  proper,  Mr.  Salva- 
dor Brau  in  his  "Porto  Rico  y  su  Historia"  states  that  "the 
general  character  of  the  present  generation  of  Porto  Ricans 
is  made  up  of  the  distinctive  qualities  of  the  three  races 
(Spanish,  Indians  and  Africans)  from  which  they  are  de- 
scended, to  wit:  indolence,  taciturnity,  sobriety,  disinterest- 
edness, hospitality,  inherited  from  their  Indian  ancestors; 
physical  endurance,  sensuality,  and  fatalism  from  their  negro 
progenitors;  and  love  of  display,  love  of  country,  independ- 
ence, devotion,  perseverance,  and  chivalry  from  their  Spanish 
sires." 

To  the  Porto  Rican  population  should  be  added  the  few 
Spaniards  who  remain  in  the  island,  the  larger  number  of 
British  West  Indian  laborers  who  have  come  here  to  live, 
and  the  Americans  who  as  government  officials  or  interested 
in  the  various  industries,  have  moved  here  since  the  Ameri- 
can occupation. 1 

Such  are  the  constituent  parts  of  the  million  and  a 
fifth  of  islanders.  One  significant  fact  is  brought  out 
by  Bishop  Colmore,  a  fact  which  has  a  large  bearing 
on  the  economic  and  religious  condition  of  the  country, 
— namely  that,  "as  in  most  of  the  Latin  countries,  there 
is,  practically  speaking,  no  middle  class,  though  this 
most  desirable  element  in  a  population  is  said  to  be 
on  the  increase.  With  the  introduction  of  foreign 
ideas  as  to  the  dignity  of  labor,  there  is  sure  to  be 
a  change  for  the  better  in  this  particular,"  For  those 
who  are  interested  in  social  uplift,  in  home-making 
and  character  building  and  soul  saving,  nothing  is 
more  vital  than  this.  As  has  been  emphasized  often 
it  is  difficult  to  lay  solid  foundations  for  Church 
or  State  on  either  of  the  so-called  upper  and  lower 
classes.  The  Master  chose  fishermen  and  publicans 
for  His  lieutenants.    Was  not  He,  Himself,  brought  up 

*  Quoted  from  a  letter  recently  received  from  Bishop  Colmore. 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  95 

as  a  carpenter,  and  was  not  St.  Paul  the  tent-maker 
most  emphatic  about  the  value  of  being  an  "operative"  ? 

It  would  seem  then  that  economically  the  two  chief 
needs  of  the  Island  are  agricultural  schools  and  such 
an  industrial  development  as  will  create  a  "middle 
class."  To  these  should  be  added  the  need  for  a  re- 
lentless campaign  against  that  enemy  of  all  progress, 
the  hook  worm.  "Another  great  and  far-reaching 
advance,"  writes  Bishop  Colmore,  "has  been  the  dis- 
covery in  1900  of  the  germ  of  tlncinariasis,  anemia 
or  hook  worm.  The  economic  value  of  the  discovery 
may  be  understood  from  the  fact  that  the  disease  re- 
duces the  efficiency  of  the  workman  at  least  fifty 
per  cent.  It  was  found  that  in  cases  which  are  not 
too  far  advanced,  the  trouble  may  be  cured  by  specific 
treatment,  and  through  the  establishment  of  clinics 
and  dispensaries  the  disease  has  been  practically  eradi- 
cated from  the  cities.  In  1910  it  was  estimated  that 
about  300,000  cases  were  still  in  existence  in  the  coun- 
try districts."  As  one  goes  through  the  country  the 
sallow  faces  and  emaciated  bodies  of  the  men  bear 
sorrowful  testimony  to  the  devastations  of  this  disease. 
The  work  of  fighting  it  has  been  begun,  to  be  sure, 
but  before  the  people  of  the  highlands  can  become 
really  efficient  laborers  it  must  be  totally  wiped  out. 

To  turn  to  the  political  problems  yet  to  be  solved, 
none  is  more  pressing  than  the  question  of  citizen- 
ship. Though  home  rule  largely  exists,  and  though 
freedom  has  taken  the  place  of  virtual  servitude,  the 
Porto  Rican  still  loves  Spain  better  than  the  United 
States,  for  the  simple  reason  that  though  the  Don 
abused  him,  he  treated  him  nevertheless  as  one  of 
the  family.  "It  is  all  very  well,"  said  a  most  intelli- 
gent young  islander  to  the  writer,  "to  say  that  you 
have  helped  us,  but  you  have  left  the  most  important 
thing  of  all  undone.  You  have  not  made  us  United 
States  citizens.    What  are  we  to-day?    We  are  neither 


96  THE   NEW   WORLD 

Spaniards  nor  Americans.  We  are  only  Porto  Ricans, 
and  what  is  a  Porto  Rican?  He  has  no  flag  of  his 
own !" 

This  is  not  as  simple  a  question  as  it  would  seem  to 
be.  There  has  been  a  revised  "organic  act"  before 
Congress  for  some  years.  In  its  projected  form  it 
grants  American  citizenship  to  the  people  of  Porto 
Rico  together  with  a  partially  elective  senate ;  extends 
the  appointive  judiciary  system  and  provides  for  sev- 
eral other  changes  asked  for  by  the  people.  The  mere 
fact  that  despite  all  the  pressure  which  Porto  Ricans 
can  bring  to  bear  this  act  has  not  yet  been  passed 
shows  that  the  government  feels  that  its  implications 
are  so  serious  as  to  demand  more  than  a  hurried 
study.^ 

As  can  well  be  imagined,  in  local  politics  this  citizen- 
ship issue  is  the  largest.  There  are  two  parties  in  the 
island,  the  Republican,  which  is  associated  with  the 
national  party  in  the  United  States,  and  the  Union- 
ist, whose  chief  aim  has  been,  until  recently,  the  com- 
plete independence  of  the  island. 

Jose  de  Diego,  a  philosopher  and  poet  of  consider- 
able eminence  in  Latin  lands,  is  the  leader  of  the  ex- 
treme party.  Until  recently  he  has  had  it  pledged  to 
ultimate  membership  in  a  projected  Union  Antillana, 
or  confederacy  of  the  islands  of  the  Greater  Antilles. 
His  activities  as  an  oppositionist  to  the  American  rule 
went  so  far  in  1915  as  to  establish  a  rival  university 
in  which  nothing  but  Spanish  could  be  used.^  Very 
recently,  however,  de  Diego's  leadership  has  been 
overthrown  by  Luis  Mufioz  Rivera,  resident  commis- 
sioner for  the  island  in  Washington.  At  a  conven- 
tion held  in  San  Juan  on  October  26,  1915,  "two  resolu- 
tions were  before  the  convention,  one  embodying  the 

*  At  the  time  of  writing,  this  matter  is  being  urgently  pressed  in  Con- 
gress with  what  probable  results  the  writer  has  no-  way  of  ascertaining. 
^  '  In  the  University  of  Porto  Rico  and  in  the  public  schools  everything 
IS  taught  m  English. 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  97 

ideas  of  Luis  Munoz  Rivera  for  complete  home  rule, 
and  the  other  calHng  for  independence  as  advocated 
by  Jose  de  Diego. 

The  home  rule  issue  won  105  to  35.  This  action  of  the 
convention  was  followed  by  the  resignation  of  Mr.  de  Diego 
as  president  of  the  party,  together  with  the  resignations  of 
the  members  of  the  Junta  Central.  All  of  these  resignations 
were  unanimously  accepted  by  the  convention. 

Those  who  attended  the  convention  and  who  were  in 
accord  with  its  almost  unanimous  action  went  away  feeling 
that  they  had  participated  in  and  witnessed  one  of  the  most 
highly  successful  gatherings  which  Munoz  Rivera  has  ever 
dominated.  They  seemed  well  satisfied  with  the  new  demon- 
stration of  absolute  control  which  the  resident  commissioner 
displayed  and  asserted  that  their  predictions  that  de  Diego 
would  be  eliminated  as  an  important  factor  in  the  party 
had  been  more  than  fulfilled. 

Others,  however,  contended  that  the  failure  of  the  con- 
vention to  go  on  record  as  frankly  favoring  United  States 
citizenship  and  the  retention  of  the  idea  of  ultimate  in- 
dependence— a  thing  to  be  dreamed  of  but  not  to  be  talked 
about — left  something  to  be  desired  in  the  way  of  eliminat- 
ing the  de  Diego  faction,  and  asserted  that  Mr.  de  Diego 
might  with  good  grace  continue  to  work  with  the  party 
for  immediate  home  rule,  while  as  an  individual  he  might 
continue  to  carry  on  his  independence  campaign,  but  with- 
out the  official  sanction  of  the  party.^ 

Commenting  on  this  movement,  Bishop  Colmore 
writes : 

The  independence  of  Porto  Rico  would  seem  to  be  a 
financial  impossibility,  since,  e.g.,  the  federal  government 
to-day  supports  the  postal,  lighthouse  and  marine  hospital 
services  and  the  Porto  Rico  regiment,  and  at  the  same  time 
turns  over  to  the  insular  government  all  the  customs  receipts 
of  the  island.  Even  with  all  this  done  by  the  federal  govern- 
ment, it  has  been  found  necessary  to  practice  strict  economies, 
cutting  down  many  former  appropriations,  in  order  to  avoid 
bankruptcy  of  the  insular  government. 

As  for  centuries  in  the  past  [writes  our  bishop  upon  another 
and  important  matter]  so  to-day  the  Roman  Church  controls 

'  Quoted  from  The  Porto  Rico  Progress  of  Wednesday,  October  27, 
1915.     The  Progress  is  the  English  newspaper  of  the  Island. 


98  THE   NEW   WORLD 

largely  the  religious  life  of  the  island.  However,  as  is  often 
the  case  in  this  part  of  the  world,  the  Church  has  lost  control 
of  the  people,  and  while  they  are  nominally  Roman  Catholic, 
baptized,  married  and  confirmed,  so,  in  a  majority  of  cases, 
their  relationship  to  the  Church  ceases  there.  Many  have 
fallen  away  from  the  Church  altogether,  as  is  evidenced  by  a 
religious  census  taken  in  Puerta  de  Tierra,  San  Juan,  which 
revealed  that  in  about  fifty  families  a  large  percentage  of  the 
parents  (all  in  the  working  class)  professed  no  religion  what- 
ever. This  condition  might  naturally  be  expected  where  the 
relationship  of  the  Church  toward  the  people  has  been  a 
business  one  rather  than  a  pastoral  one. 

So-called  Protestantism  claims  a  communicant  member- 
ship of  some  13,000.  Others  who  have  left  the  church  of 
their  fathers  are  wandering,  largely  indifferent,  but  open 
to  the  consideration  of  almost  any  form  of  non-Roman 
religion.  Many  there  are  who  like  to  call  themselves  "free 
thinkers,"  but  who  are  largely  Spiritualists,  or  Theosophists. 
This  cult  has  gained  a  large  following  in  Porto  Rico,  and 
was  in  existence  long  before  the  American  occupation.  There 
seems  to  be  no  general  organization  of  the  movement.  The 
members  in  a  town  form  a  "center"  which  is  independent 
of  all  other  centers.  They  have  no  paid  ministers  or  leaders, 
and  attack  very  vigorously  that  practice  in  other  churches. 
Their  chief  tenet  seems  to  be  the  re-incarnation  of  the  soul. 
They  deny  the  divinity  of  Christ,  but  say  that  He  was 
a  spirit  which  had  been  highly  developed  through  a  series 
of  incarnations,  and  that  this  condition  is  possible  in  any 
human  being,  and  that  many  such  may  arise  at  any  time. 

The  secret  of  the  success  of  this  movement  is  no  doubt 
due  to  the  enormous  distribution  of  literature  on  the  sub- 
ject— a  fact  which  we  should  take  very  much  to  heart.  Not 
only  are  there  works  in  Spanish  on  the  doctrines  and 
philosophy  of  the  movement,  purchasable  at  all  book  stores, 
but  also  innumerable  novels  of  a  poor  order,  which  hint  at, 
and  artfully  make  use  of,  their  doctrines  and  teachings. 
There  is  evidence  in  addition  to  this  of  a  decided  searching 
on  the  part  of  many  of  the  better  class  of  Porto  Ricans 
for  something  outside  the  Roman  Church  to  satisfy  their 
religious  longings.^ 

It  is  to  be  hoped,  however,  that  the  Roman  Church  has 
changed  its  policy  in  the  latter  years,  and  will  consequently 
gain    ground.    It    has    an    American    bishop,    and    American 

*  The  following  are  declared  to  be  the  objects  of  the  Theosophical 
Society,    according   to    the   Revista    Teosofica,    the    official    organ    of   the 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  99 

clergy  are  being  brought  in  from  time  to  time.  A  large 
plant  for  a  church  and  industrial  school,  in  which  there  should 
be  accommodation  for  some  two  thousand  children,  has 
lately  been  completed  in  Puerta  de  Tierra,  San  Juan,  which 
should  accomplish  a  large  amount  of  good. 


OUR  WORK  IN  PORTO  RICO 

The  Spanish  Government  issued  a  decree  granting 
freedom  of  worship  in  the  Island  of  Porto  Rico  in 
1869,  and  a  group  of  foreign  residents  ^  met  on  the 
19th  of  December  of  that  year  to  discuss  the  feasibiHty 
of  establishing  a  Church.  In  the  Spirit  of  Missions 
for  March,  1870,  we  find  the  following  letter  addressed 
to  the  Editor  of  the  Tidende,  presumably  a  St.  Croix 
publication : 

At  this  meeting  it  was  decided  that  sufficient  encourage- 
ment having  been  given,  in  a  practical  way,  by  the  names 
and  sums  on  the  subscription  lists  already  in  circulation,  that 
the  best  endeavors  of  the  parties  then  met  together  be  used 
to  bring  this  project  to  a  satisfactory  issue,  and  in  order  to 
form  a  nucleus  for  the  transaction  of  the  necessary  business 
attendant  on  the  enterprise,  the  above-named  gentlemen 
formed  themselves  into   a  committee.    It  was  at   the  same 

Cuban  section  of  the  society.    Inasmuch  as  the  Spanish  almost  translates 
itself,  it  is  given  in  the  original: — 

1.  Formal"  el  nucleo  de  una  Fraternidad  Universal  de  la  Humanidad, 
sin   distincion   de  raza,   creencia,   sexo,   casta   o   color. 

2.  Fomentar  el  estudio  comparativo  de  las  Religiones,  Literaturas  y 
Ciencias. 

3.  Investigar  las  leyes  inexplicadas  de  la  Naturaleza  y  los  poderes 
psiquicos  latentes  en  el   hombre. 

A  los  que  deseen  pertenecer  a  la  Sociedad,  no  se  les  pregunta  por 
sus  opiniones.  religiosas  o  politicas,  pero  en  carabio  se  exige  a  todos, 
ante  de  su  admision,  la  promesa  de  respetar  las  creencias  de  los  demas 
miembros. 

In  Ponce  is  published  a  monthly  review,  "La  Estrella  de  Oriente" 
(Star  of  the  Orient).  This  is  the  official  organ  of  the  "Ananda"  lodge 
of  the  society.  From  the  way  in  which  it  interchanges  the  words 
Theosophy  and  Spiritualism  (Teosofica  and  Espiritualista)  it  would  seem 
that  the  spiritualism  of  the  Antilles  is  quite  different  from  what  we 
associate  with  that  word.  The  prophets  of  the  Porto  Rican  spiritualists 
are  Mrs.  Besant  and  H.   P.   Blavatski! 

»  These  gentlemen  were:  W.  E.  Lee,  Thomas  G.  Salomons,  Thomas 
p  Dodd,  Joseph  Henna,  Charles  H.  Daly,  G.  F.  Wiechers,  T.  Bronsted, 
John  F.  Finlay,  Peter  J.  Minvielle  and  J.  F.  Finlay.  Spirit  of  Missions, 
March,  1870,  p.   182. 


100  THE   NEW   WORLD 

time  agreed  upon,  that  the  church  to  be  established  should 
be  of  the  "Episcopal  denomination." 

The  names  on  the  subscription  lists  are  positively  such  as 
to  lead  to  the  hope  that  the  church,  if  established,  will  be 
a  glorious  success.  The  amount,  reaching  little  short  of 
$5,000,  is  capable  of  being  increased;  the  alarm  that  has  been 
created  among  the  priesthood  is  a  further  proof  of  the 
probability  of  success.  Sermons  are  being  preached  in  their 
church,  of  a  most  violent  character,  condemning  Protestantism 
in  all  its  details — clergy,  Bibles,  etc.,  etc.;  the  effects  of  which 
sermons  are,  however,  doing  us  a  great  deal  of  good,  instead 
of  the  injury  intended;  and  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  we  as 
yet  have  no  supply  of  translated  Prayer  Books  and  Bibles, 
as  inquiries  for  them  are  frequent,  all  being  anxious  to  read 
these  so  condemned  works. 

Another  meeting  of  the  committee  was  called  on  the  22d 
inst.,  at  which  it  was  decided  that  a  clergyman  should  be 
immediately  called  to  take  charge  of  our  congregation,  for 
the  limited  period  of  six  months;  services  to  be  conducted 
in  some  temporarily  arranged  building,  pending  the  collecting 
of  funds  and  erecting  of  the  edifice.  The  Rev.  Mr.  Allan 
of  your  island,  now  visiting  our  place,  was  invited  to  hold 
service  for  us  on  Sunday — yesterday — to  which  he  kindly 
consented.  Consequently,  on  the  28th  day  of  November,  1869, 
the  first  Protestant  service  ever  held  in  this  island  was  con- 
ducted at  the  residence  of  Thomas  G.  Salomons,  Esq.,  who 
had  hurriedly,  but  becomingly,  arranged  his  large  hall  for 
the  purpose.  The  attendance  amounted  to  about  200  persons, 
and  everything  passed  off  in  a  highly  satisfactory  manner; 
even  the  singing,  and  performance  on  the  harmonium,  was 
of  a  superior  order,  parties  not  of  our  faith  having  volunteered 
to  assist  in  having  everything  go  off  well.  Such  is  the  feel- 
ing extant.  To  you,  no  doubt  accustomed  to  hear  them,  I 
need  scarcely  say  a  word  about  the  beautiful  prayers,  and  most 
appropriate  sermon  delivered  by  Mr.  Allan,  who  chose  for  his 
text,  St.  John,  3d  chapter,  14th  verse,  moving^  many  of  his 
audience  to  tears  by  his  impressive  and  appropriate  discourse. 
On  his  concluding,  but  one  feeling  existed,— that  of  regret 
at  its  termination.! 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  the  Church's  first  entrance 
into  the  island  was  for  the  purpose  of  ministering  to 
those  resident  English  and  Americans  who  had  by  rea- 

^  spirit  of  Missions,  March,   1870.  pp.   182-183. 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  101 

son  of  an  ancient  law  been  deprived  of  all  spiritual 
oversight. 

The  next  official  statement  about  the  work  we  find 
in  the  Spirit  of  Missions  for  February,  1873,  where 
this  entry  occurs: 

A  new  opening  for  the  work  of  our  church  presents  itself 
in  the  establishment  of  the  Parish  of  the  Holy  Trinity  at 
Ponce,  Porto  Rico.  The  first  public  services  were  held  in 
that  city  on  the  festival  of  the  Epiphany  by  the  Rev.  J.  C. 
DuBois,  of  St.  Paul's,  St.  Croix,  on  the  united  invitation  of 
the  Protestants  in  the  place.  The  result  of  the  services  held 
on  that  day  and  subsequently  was  the  organization  of  the 
parish  with  the  above  name.  As  all  the  services  have  been 
conducted  by  members  of  his  diocese,  Bishop  Jackson,  of 
Antigua,  has  given  the  work  there  his  counsel  and  over- 
sight, and  in  the  month  of  June  invited  the  people  and  held 
services  with  them.  .    .    . 

There  is  a  singular  unanimity  in  the  present  movement  of 
all  the  resident  Protestants  in  their  desire  for  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Episcopal  Church ;  affording  an  opportunity  for 
the  establishment  of  our  Scriptural  liturgy  in  a  foreign  land 
which  has  rarely  been  presented  us.  A  lot  has  been  given, 
and  an  iron  church  ordered  from  Liverpool,  paid  for  prin- 
cipally by  subscriptions  raised  in  Ponce,  but  by  the  failure 
of  a  banking  house,  whose  drafts  they  had  purchased  and 
forwarded  in  part  payment  of  the  new  church,  they  have  suf- 
fered a  loss  of  $600. 

The  establishment  of  a  school  in  connection  with  the  parish 
work  may  for  a  year  or  two  have  to  be  secured  by  con- 
tributions from  abroad,  and  in  the  prospective  influences  of 
a  school  of  the  design  contemplated  American  churchmen 
have  certainly  an  equal,  if  not  greater  interest.^ 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  inaugurators  of  the  work 
were  Anglicans  acting  under  the  oversight  of  the 
Bishop  of  Antigua.  Thus,  just  as  we  inherited  the 
foundations  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands  from  the  Church 
of  England,  so  do  we  owe  to  that  Church  the  begin- 
nings of  the  work  in  Porto  Rico.^ 

*  spirit  of  Missions,  February,  1873,  pp.   126-127. 

'The  missionary  societies  of  the  Church  of  England  support  seven 
dioceses  in  the  West  Indies.  They  are:  the  Diocese  of  Nassau,  which 
includes    alj    the   islands   between    Great    Bahama   on   the    northwest   to 


102  THE   NEW   WORLD 

After  the  American  occupation,  Chaplain  Brown  of 
the  Army  did  much  to  help  the  little  congregation  in 
Ponce,  and  to  bolster  up  some  small  beginning  which 
had  been  made  in  San  Juan.  At  the  same  time 
Bishop  McLaren,  of  Chicago,  became  deeply  inter- 
ested in  the  Porto  Rican  work  and  was  put  in  charge 
of  it.     He  appealed  widely   for  funds  for  buildings. 

The  Rev.  George  B.  Pratt,  appointed  by  the  Bishop 
of  Chicago,  took  charge  of  the  mission  in  San  Juan  in 
March,  1899,  and  held  services  in  a  building  on  the 
plasa  principal.  There  he  was  visited  by  Bishop  Whip- 
ple at  the  request  of  the  Bishop  of  Chicago,  in  1900. 
A  long  account  of  this  visitation  is  given  in  the  Spirit 
of  Missions. 

"In  his  visits,"  the  article  states,  "to  the  principal 
towns,  Bishop  Whipple  found  everywhere  a  warm  wel- 
come. The  hearts  of  the  people  'seemed  to  be  hungry 
for  the  ministrations  of  the  Church.  Llis  first  service 
was  held  in  San  Juan,  where  the  Reverend  George  B. 
Pratt  has  gathered  the  beginnings  of  a  promising 
congregation.  At  the  present  time  they  are  mostly 
Americans.  It  is  not  to  be  expected  that,  so  long 
as  the  services  of  the  Church  are  held  in  an  incon- 
venient and  inadequate  place,  any  but  those  who  are 
already  earnest  Church  people,  or  those  who  wish  to 
gather  with  their  fellow-countrymen,  will  attend  them. 
Much,  however,  has  been  done  to  prepare  the  way  for 
future  work.  A  class  of  twelve  persons  was  presented 
for  Confirmation.  Some  of  the  Army  officers  are  in- 
terested in  the  maintenance  of  the  services.  One  of 
them  acts  as  organist.    Another  is  one  of  the  Church 

Magua  and  Turks  Island  on  the  southeast;  the  Diocese  of  Antigua, 
which  includes  all  the  islands  east  and  south  of  Porto  Rico,  the  southern- 
most being  Martinique;  the  Diocese  of  Barbadoes  and  the  Windward 
Islands,  which  includes  everything  between  St.  Lucia  on  the  north  and 
Granada  on  the  south;  the  'Diocese  of  Trinidad;  the  Diocese  of  Hon- 
duras; the  Diocese  of  Guiana;  the  Diocese  of  Jamaica.  The  Society 
for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  has  been  largely  responsible  for  this 
work.  A  little  book  published  by  that  society,  entitled,  "Our  Oppor- 
tunity in  the  West  Indies,"  by  B.  G.  O'Rorke,  tells  of  the  work  and 
its  possibilities. 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  103 

officers,  but  they  are  liable  to  removal  at  any  time,  and 
cannot  be  permanent  elements  of  strength.  The  Bishop 
held  two  other  services  in  San  Juan;  one  in  the  regi- 
mental barracks  and  one  in  the  Church  room,  at  which 
he  confirmed  a  second  class."  ^ 

Meantime  despite  Chaplain  Brown's  efforts,  the 
work  in  Ponce  had  run  down  badly.  The  Rev.  Fred- 
erick Caunt,  who  had  been  put  in  charge  (also  in 
1899),  found  when  he  arrived,  that  the  Church  build- 
ing had  been  closed  for  some  years.  In  August 
of  that  year  some  churchmen  in  General  Miles'  army 
had  made  an  effort  to  open  it,  but  had  retreated  before 
the  dilapidation  which  met  them.  Bishop  Whipple 
wrote  home,  after  he  had  seen  the  structure,  that  the 
only  thing  to  do  was  to  tear  it  down,  that  it  was  not 
safe,  but  when  the  writer  was  in  Ponce  in  September, 
1915,  the  same  old  church  was  being  used.  The  present 
bishop  avers  that  one  good  blow  will  settle  all  ques- 
tions as  to  how  much  longer  it  will  last. 

With  visits  to  Mayaguez,  where  Mr.  Monefeldt  was 
beginning  his  long  and  helpful  career  as  a  lay  reader, 
and  Arroyo  and  Cayey,  Bishop  Whipple  concluded  his 
visitation.  His  last  words  on  the  subject  were:  "The 
first  duty  of  the  Church  in  the  United  States  is  to 
send  a  bishop  to  Porto  Rico.  This  must  be  done 
quickly.  Precious  time  has  already  been  lost  by  delay. 
There  could  be  no  field  more  attractive  to  a  great 
hearted  shepherd  of  souls,  both  because  of  the  diffi- 
culty of  the  work  and  the  certainty  of  the  harvest. 
A  man  is  needed  of  profound  sympathy,  wide  exe- 
cutive ability,  and  the  hopefulness  of  his  Master. 
Nothing  less  than  such  characteristics  will  enable  him 
to  grapple  with  the  difficulties  and  solve  the  problems 
by  which  he  will  be  confronted." 

Acting  under  instructions  from  the  Presiding  Bishop, 
Bishop  Peterkin,  of  West  Virginia,  visited  the  island 

^spirit  of  Missions,  April,  1900,  p.   208. 


104  THE   NEW   WORLD 

in  January,  1901.  During  his  two  months  stay  he  held 
services  in  nineteen  different  places ;  confirmed  twelve 
persons  in  Holy  Trinity  Church,  Ponce;  six  in  AH 
Saints,  Vieques;  and  one  in  the  temporary  chapel  in 
San  Juan,  in  which  latter  place  he  found  Chaplain 
Brown  in  charge  once  again,  since  Mr.  Pratt  had  been 
compelled  to  leave.^ 

Better  days  were  now  in  store  for  the  work  in  San 
Juan.     The  Rev.  James  H.  Van  Buren  arriving  in 

1901,  took  up  the  rectorship  of  St.  John's  and  put 
new  life  into  everything.  Writing  from  that  city 
in  the  summer  of  1901,  Mr.  Van  Buren  said  that  the 
Church  was  needed  in  Porto  Rico,  "that  the  American 
life  which  is  flowing  in  here  may  be  kept  true  to 
Christ" ;  that  it  should  help  the  Americans  to  be 
exemplars  of  the  higher  life  and  thus  impress  "upon 
the  Porto  Ricans  the  fact  that  in  exchanging  Spanish 
for  American  supremacy  they  have  not  become  sub- 
jects or  citizens  of  a  non-Christian  nation.  It  is  im- 
portant," he  continues,  "that  our  Church  should  bear 
no  inferior  part  in  stemming  the  un-Chrlstian  tide  of 
immigration  against  which  every  American  in  Porto 
Rico  must  make  a  struggle."  As  one  of  the  clearest  ex- 
planations for  the  need  of  the  American  Church  in 
Porto  Rico  this  statement  of  Bishop  Van  Buren's  is 
worthy  of  much  emphasis. 

At  the  General  Convention  which  met  in  San  Fran- 
cisco in  1901,  the  Rev.  William  Cabell  Brown,  of 
Brazil,  was  elected  Bishop  of  Porto  Rico,  but  feeling 
,  the  great  Importance  of  the  work  which  he  was  doing 
in  the  South  American  republic,  he  declined. 

At  a  special  meeting  held  in  Cincinnati,  April   16, 

1902,  the  House  of  Bishops  next  elected  the  rector  of 
St.  John's,  San  Juan.  Commenting  on  this,  the  Spirit 
of  Missions  said: 

*  The  best  summary  of  the  early  history  of  the  work  will  be   found 
in  Vol.  LXVI  of  the  Spirit  of  Missions,  pp.  232-236. 


o 

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O 

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o 

fa  U 


ys 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  105 

When  in  the  winter  of  1900  the  Board  of  Managers  seemed 
to  have  great  difficulty  in  finding  just  the  right  man  to  send 
to  Porto  Rico,  the  Reverend  James  H.  Van  Buren,  then 
rector  of  the  important  parish  of  St.  Stephen,  Lynn,  Mass., 
volunteered  for  the  service  under  the  conviction,  as  he  ex- 
pressed it,  that  the  honor  of  the  American  Church  is  at  stake 
in  this  matter.  In  February,  1901,  Mr.  Van  Buren  reached 
San  Juan.  The  work  he  has  done  since  then  in  creating  con- 
fidence in  the  small  group  of  discouraged  church  people, 
gathering  a  vigorous  congregation  of  English-speaking  resi- 
dents, and  a  Porto  Rican  congregation  of  much  promise  .  .  . 
indicates  that  he  is  peculiarly  qualified  to  be  the  leader  of 
the  church's  work  in  this  new  district. 

In  any  story  of  the  mission  on  our  island  posses- 
sion, mention  should  be  made  of  the  name  of  Francis 
B.  Dumaresq,  who  took  a  prominent  part  in  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  work  at  San  Juan.  The  delay  and  dis- 
couragements of  the  early  days  served  only  to  stimu- 
late his  zeal  and  increase  his  readiness  to  serve.  He 
realized  to  the  full  the  constructive  power  of  the 
Church  and  the  part  it  could  play  in  the  elevation  of 
the  people.  As  Mr.  Van  Buren's  counsellor  and  helper, 
he  gave  generously  of  his  time  and  means.  He  was 
the  first  senior  warden  of  St.  John's,  and  on  his  death 
made  provision  for  the  cancelling  of  a  note  of  a  thou- 
sand dollars  for  money  advanced  by  him  for  the  pur- 
chase of  a  site  for  the  new  Church. 

At  best  the  climate  of  Porto  Rico  is  trying.  Bishop 
Van  Buren  suffered  incessantly  from  the  damp  heat. 
Try  as  he  would  to  disregard  the  ravages  which  the 
tropical  sun  wrought,  it  was  in  vain,  and  his  health 
gave  way  so  completely  in  1912,  that  he  had  to  resign. 
The  Rev.  Charles  Blaney  Colmore,  dean  of  the  Cathe- 
dral in  Havana,  was  elected  at  the  General  Convention 
of  1913,  in  his  stead.^ 

*  Between  the  resignation  of  Bishop  Van  Buren  and  the  election  of 
Bishop  Colmore,  Bishop  Knight  of  Cuba  had  charge  of  the  work.  Thus 
it  came  to  pass  that  Dr.  Knight  has  served  the  church  right  valiantly 
in  four  fields:  Cuba,  Porto  Kico,  Haiti  and  the  Canal  Zone,  and  a 
tower  of  strength  he  has  been  in  all. 


106  THE   NEW   WORLD 

The  new  bishop  arrived  at  San  Juan  in  January, 
1914.  What  follows  is  his  own  statement  of  the  work 
as  it  was  in  November,  1915: 

In  San  Juan  we  have,  in  the  first  place,  the  Church  of 
St.  John  the  Baptist.  Its  congregation  is  composed  of  Ameri- 
cans and  other  EngHsh-speaking  people.  It  has  a  flourishing 
Sunday  school.  A  private  school  for  younger  children  in  the 
Condado, — an  uptown  residence  district  about  three  miles 
from  the  center  of  San  Juan — has  been  opened  in  connection 
with  this  parish.  A  young  Porto  Rican  woman  of  the  parish 
is  preparing  to  establish  a  kindergarten  and  first  grade  school 
work  among  the  Porto  Rican  children  of  the  neighborhood. 

Next  comes  St.  Luke's  Church,  Puerta  de  Tierra, — that  part 
of  the  city  which  is  midway  between  the  downtown  old  San 
Juan  and  the  uptown  new  district.  It  has  two  congregations, 
one  composed  of  Porto  Ricans,  the  other  of  the  British  West 
Indian  negroes.  There  is  a  large  Sunday  school  with  chil- 
dren from  both  congregations.  A  weekly  Bible  class  is  con- 
ducted for  the  West  Indians,  as  also  is  a  mutual  benefit 
association,  which  insures  them  a  small  sick  benefit  allow- 
ance, and  burial  in  case  of  death.  In  the  basement  of  St. 
Luke's  there  is  a  good  assembly  room,  and  here  we  have  a 
day  school  of  some  forty-five  children  in  the  lower  grades. 

There  are  two  auxiliary  chapels  in  the  suburbs  of  San 
Juan:  St.  Paul's  and  the  Annunciation.  The  latter  is  in  the 
heart  of  what  is  destined  to  be  the  best  uptown  residence 
section.  As  yet  the  work  in  them  is  small,  though  good 
beginnings  have  been  made.  It  is  planned  to  co-ordinate 
these  four  works  in  a  modified  cathedral  organization  under 
the  leadership  of  the  Bishop,  with  St.  John's  as  the  center. 

The  church  building  in  Ponce  is,  as  has  been  told,  the 
oldest  non-Roman  place  of  worship  in  the  Spanish  possessions. 
The  property  on  which  it  stands  is  central  and  valuable. 
It  is  now  used  for  services  in  both  the  Spanish  and  English 
languages.  Among  those  who  attend  are  Americans  from  the 
sugar  mills,  English,  Porto  Ricans,  and  West  Indian  negroes. 
In  the  lower  story  of  the  adjacent  rectory,  there  is  a  hall 
with  reading  room  and  games  to  attract  the  young  people. 
This  hall  is  also  the  home  of  the  Sunday  school  and  the 
Mutual  Benefit  Society  of  Holy  Trinity. 

St.  Luke's  Hospital,  situated  in  Ponce,  on  a  hillside  above 
the  center  of  the  town,  is  our  most  successful  institutional 
work.  It  helps  to  commend  the  Church  to  the  people  of  the 
western  part  of  the  island.     We  have  here  a  large  building 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  107 

thoroughly  equipped,  and  an  average  of  some  thirty-five 
patients  are  taken  care  of  at  all  times.  The  hospital,  after 
having  been  closed  for  a  year,  is  rapidly  winning  favor  among 
both  the  people  and  the  local  physicians.  A  well-appointed 
chapel,  where  regular  services  are  held,  marks  the  connec- 
tion between  the  philanthropic  and  evangelistic  work  of  the 
church.  A  good  training  school  with  fourteen  pupil  nurses, 
gives  an  opportunity  for  the  Porto  Rican  girls  to  obtain  a 
valuable  and  useful  profession, — something  new  for  a  Spanish 
province. 

In  Mayaguez  our  building,  though  old  and  disreputable, 
still  roofs  in  St.  Andrew's  Church,  a  parish  school  and  the 
beginning  of  a  home  for  orphans.  We  believe  the  church 
schools  are  the  most  effective  means  of  getting  at  the  chil- 
dren. Furthermore,  the  influence  exerted  in  them  is  sure  to 
tell  in  later  years.  There  are  about  forty  children  in  the 
Mayaguez  school,  and  it  is  most  encouraging  to  hear  them 
join  in  the  morning  service,  before  school  begins.  A  few 
girls  are  kept  as  boarders  as  charges  of  the  Church.  Most 
of  them  have  no  homes,  or  come  from  undesirable  surround- 
ings, and  the  instruction  they  are  receiving,  both  theoretical 
and  practical,  will  be  the  largest  factor  in  their  lives. 

The  Island  of  Vieques  (Crab  Island)  lies  some  fifteen 
miles  off  the  eastern  coast  of  Porto  Rico,  and  consists  chiefly 
of  sugar  lands.  There  is  one  town  of  importance,  Isabel 
Segunda,  where  we  have  a  church  building  and  rectory.  This 
work  was  begun  for  the  benefit  of  the  Church  of  England 
West  Indian  negroes,  who  came  to  Vieques  in  the  earlier 
days.  At  the  present  time  the  oversight  of  the  parish  is  in 
the  hands  of  the  priest  of  Fajardo,  who  twice  a  month 
crosses  the  stormy  strait  in  a  thirty-foot  mail  launch.  We 
also  have  a  resident  parish  worker,  who,  between  the  visits 
of  the  priest,  holds  services,  conducts  Sunday  school  and 
the  different  auxiliaries  and  sewing  classes. 

Fajardo,  at  the  northeast  corner  of  the  island,  reached  by 
train  in  about  three  hours,  is  the  only  mission  in  Porto  Rico 
which  does  not  own  its  building.  We  are  in  great  need  of 
property  there  and  plan  to  put  up,  some  day,  a  building 
which  will  serve  for  both  chapel  and  parish  house.  We  esti- 
mate that  six  thousand  dollars  will  be  sufficient  to  do  this. 
Our  work  here  is  almost  entirely  among  the  Porto  Rican 
people  and  will  grow  faster  as  soon  as  we  can  procure  a 
home  for  it. 

At  El  Coto,  about  twenty-five  miles  west  of  San  Juan,  near 
the  northern  shore,  is  the  newest  and  most  prosperous  mission 
we  have  among  the  Porto  Ricans.     Situated  in  a  rural  dis- 


108  THE   NEW   WORLD 

trict  among  pineapple  and  grapefruit  plantations,  where  there 
are  no  other  advantages  for  spiritual  refreshment,  the  people 
as  a  whole  flock  to  the  Chapel  of  the  Resurrection  whenever 
there  is  to  be  a  service.  The  chapel  is  constructed  of  con- 
crete, and  with  the  exception  of  a  few  gifts  of  furnishings, 
represents  the  self-sacrifice  of  the  devoted  missionary  and  his 
wife.  The  wife  is  a  most  capable  graduate  nurse,  and  her 
ministrations  in  the  community  are  a  Godsend  to  the  people. 
Just  lately  these  devoted  people  have  bought  and  refitted  a 
small  building  on  a  piece  of  property  adjoining  their  own, 
and  have  arranged  it  for  the  purpose  of  a  night  school,  dis- 
pensary and  reading-room.  The  little  place  is  always  crowded, 
and  the  doors  and  windows  are  often  filled  with  eager  adults 
who  try  by  looking  on  to  gain  some  advantage  from  the 
instruction  being  imparted  to  the  younger  ones.  We  should 
establish  more  missions  of  this  kind  among  those  com- 
munities which  are  not  receiving  the  ministrations  of  any 
other  Christian  body. 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  109 


THE  CANAL  ZONE 

If  there  is  any  one  spot  in  Latin  America  which  is 
rich  above  all  others  in  historical  associations  it  is  that 
strip  of  land  between  Cape  Gracias  a  Dios  and  the 
Gulf  of  Darien.  It  resounds  with  memories  of  Colum- 
bus and  Ojeda  and  Nicuesa.  It  was  there  that  Balboa 
labored  and  achieved;  there  that  the  unspeakable 
Pedrarias  wrote  his  name  on  history's  page  of  shame ; 
from  there  Pizarro  and  his  little  crew  set  out  to  con- 
quer Peru;  across  it,  the  treasures  of  the  Incas  were 
born  under  heavy  guard;  along  its  shores  buccaneers 
and  pirates,  explorers  and  smugglers  picked  their  un- 
certain way;  and  in  its  city  of  Panama  colonial  life 
reached  its  heights, — and  depths.  Read  the  story  of 
the  Isthmus  and  you  get  in  concentrated  form  the 
history  of  the  Conquistadores. 

It  is  to  more  modern  times,  however,  that  we  must 
attend,  to  the  days  when  the  dreams,  four  hundred 
years  old,  of  piercing  the  Isthmus  and  joining  the 
oceans,  began  to  be  realized.^ 

The  story  of  the  French  attempt,  in  the  years  1880 
to  1888,  to  build  a  canal  is  pathetic.  Beset  by  two  in- 
sidious enemies,  sin  (in  the  form  of  graft)  and 
mosquitoes  (the  spreaders  of  disease),  they  struggled 
along  for  a  while,  but  in  the  end  succumbed  inglori- 
ously.  Engineers  tell  us  that  it  is  a  marvel,  consider- 
ing the  difficulties  which  they  had  to  meet,  that  they 
accomplished  as  much  as  they  did.  Everyone  who  has 
lived  in  the  zone  has  a  wholesome  respect  for  de  Les- 
seps  and  the  Universal  Interoceanic  Canal  Company. 
Beyond  the  fact,  though,  that  the  French  once  tried 
to  do  the  work,  and  having  failed  sold  out  their  rights 

*  On  the   earliest  plans  for  a  canal   see  Helps,   Spanish   Conquest  of 
297?*^*'  ^*  ^^'     '^°*^^''S°"»  O^^  Panama  and  Costilla  del  Oro,  pp. 


no  THE   NEW   WORLD 

to  a  new  French  Panama  Canal  Company,  we  are  not 
interested. 

Our  concern  begins  with  the  year  1902  when  through 
a  combination  of  circumstances,  among  which  the 
abrogation  of  the  Clayton-Bulwer  Treaty  in  December, 
1901,  was  the  most  important,  it  came  to  pass  that  the 
government  of  the  United  States  began  to  plan 
definitely  to  "dig  the  big  ditch." 

As  Americans  we  have  a  right  to  be  proud  that  our 
government  has  always  refused  to  resort  to  those  poli- 
cies and  diplomacies  which  are  taken  as  a  matter  of 
course  by  some  peoples.  North  Americans,  whatever 
other  weaknesses  they  have,  are  square  and  above 
board  in  all  their  dealings  with  other  States.  We  are 
not  ''diplomats"  and  we  thank  God  for  it.  Sometimes 
we  are  misunderstood  just  because  we  are  so  obvious. 
Those  accustomed  to  the  old  Machiavellian  school 
cannot  comprehend  us.  Our  motives  are  even  at  times 
impugned  when,  though  we  have  no  secret  plans  for 
world  empire,  we  are  forced  to  send  a  revenue  cutter 
here  or  a  cruiser  there.  All  in  all,  though,  John  Hay's 
words  can  be  laid  down  as  expressing  our  attitude  to- 
ward the  world.  Speaking  at  a  dinner  in  New  York 
on  November  19,  1901,  he  said:  "If  we  are  not  per- 
mitted to  boast  of  what  we  have  done,  we  can  at  least 
say  a  word  about  what  we  have  tried  to  do  and  the 
principles  which  have  guided  our  action.  The  briefest 
expression  of  our  rule  of  conduct  is,  perhaps,  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  and  the  Golden  Rule.  With  this 
simple  chart  we  can  hardly  go  far  wrong."  ^ 

Was  there  an  exception  to  this  rule  in  our  dealings 
with  Colombia  and  Panama?  Though  we  cannot  for 
a  moment  concede  that  President  Roosevelt  and  Mr. 
Hay  did  anything  underhand  or  dishonorable, — any- 
thing that  we  should  be  ashamed  to  talk  about,  still  the 
events  which  led  up  to  our  acquisition  of  the  Canal 

*  Thayer,  The  Life  of  John  Hay,  II,  p.  296. 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  111 

Zone  were  such  as  to  need  explanation.  For  the  only 
time  in  its  history  our  government  let  expediency  and 
a  desire  to  promote  the  good  of  humanity  overrule 
a  literal  interpretation  of  treaty  rights.  For  the  only 
time  in  our  career  we  lost  patience  with  a  weak  brother 
and  used  "diplomacy"  to  bring  him  to  righteous 
terms.  Having  said  so  much  by  way  of  introduction, 
let  us  take  up  the  story. 

As  a  result  of  the  Mexican  war,  we  had  acquired 
a  long  Pacific  seaboard  with  which, — in  the  absence  of 
transcontinental  railroads — it  was  very  difficult  to  com- 
municate. Via  the  isthmus  of  Panama  was  the  only 
practical  way.  Then,  too,  England  was  getting  very 
active  in  Plonduras  and  the  Monroe  Doctrine  was  be- 
ginning to  look  a  bit  thin.^  If  we  were  to  retain  con- 
trol of  our  best  means  of  communicating  with  the 
western  coast  and  provide  against  further  British  de- 
velopments in  that  vital  spot,  something  had  to  be  done. 
Accordingly  in  1846  we  made  a  treaty  with  New  Gran- 
ada, the  old  name  for  Colombia,  by  which  "the  govern- 
ment of  New  Granada,  guarantees  to  the  government  of 
the  United  States  that  the  right  of  way  or  transit  across 
the  Isthmus  of  Panama,  upon  any  modes  of  communi- 
cation that  now  exist  or  that  may  be  hereafter  con- 
structed, shall  be  open  and  free  to  the  government 
and  citizens  of  the  United  States.  .  .  .  And  in 
order  to  secure  to  themselves  the  tranquil  and  constant 
enjoyment  of  these  advantages,  and  as  an  especial 
compensation  for  the  said  advantages,  and  for  the 
favors  they  have  acquired  by  the  fourth,  fifth,  and 
sixth  articles  of  this  treaty,  the  United  States  guaran- 

*  Every  student  of  Latin  America  should  know  what  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  is.  (See  Appendix  B.)  For  presentations  of  the  two  possible 
ways  of  interpreting  it,  the  historic  (wherein  the  United  States  is  re- 
garded as  the  party  with  the  "Paramount  Interest")  and  the  modern 
(wherein  all  the  states  of  the  New  World  are  conjointly  regarded  as 
guardians  of  New  World  liberties)  see,  Hart,  A.  B.:  The  Monroe  Doc- 
trine: An  Interpretation  and  Sherrill,  C.  H.:  Modernising  the  Monroe 
Doctritie. 


112  THE   NEW   WORLD 

tee  positively  and  efficaciously  to  New  Granada,  by 
the  present  stipulation,  the  perfect  neutraHty  of  the 
before-mentioned  Isthmus  with  the  view  that  the  free 
transit  from  the  one  to  the  other  sea  may  not  be  inter- 
rupted or  embarrassed  in  any  future  time  while  this 
treaty  exists;  and,  in  consequence,  the  United  States 
also  guarantee,  in  the  same  manner  the  rights  of 
sovereignty  and  property  which  New  Granada  has 
and  possesses  over  the  said  territory." 

Such  were  the  words  of  the  treaty.  It  is  to  be  noted 
that  they  called  for  two  things,  first  that  we  should 
maintain  uninterrupted  transportation  across  the  Isth- 
mus, and  second  that  we  should  guarantee  to  New 
Granada  sovereignty  over  the  land.  That  these  points 
were  clear  no  one  disputes,  but  .  .  .   ! 

After  much  study  of  both  the  Panama  and  Nica- 
ragua routes,  the  United  States  Government  came  to 
the  conclusion  in  1902  that  it  had  best  build  a  canal 
from  Colon  to  Panama.  There  were  many  ins  and  outs 
but  with  them  we  are  not  directly  concerned  here.  Suf- 
fice it  to  say  that  in  order  to  make  the  work  possible  the 
Hay-Herran  treaty  was  made  in  1903,  whereby  Colom- 
bia ceded  to  us  administrative  control  in  perpetuity 
over  a  strip  of  land  thirty  miles  wide  across  the  Isth- 
mus. In  return  for  this  we  agreed  to  pay  ten  millions 
in  cash  and  a  subsequent  rental,  to  begin  in  1912,  of 
$250,000  a  year.  Our  Senate  ratified  this  treaty  on 
March  17,  1903,  but,  to  the  surprise  of  all,  the  govern- 
ment at  Bogota  declined  to  follow  suit. 

The  most  charitable  explanation  of  Colombia's 
action  is  to  be  found  in  the  queer  bargaining  methods 
of  some  South  Americans.  Not  only  do  they  always 
haggle  over  a  price,  but  there  is  no  precedent  among 
them  which  holds  a  man  to  an  agreement  to  sell  or 
buy  at  a  price  to  which  he  has  agreed.  With  many 
peoples,  if  A  says  he  will  sell  to  B  for  $10,  he  will 
stand  by  his  word  if  B  **takes  him  up."    This  custom 


{Copyright,    Underwood   &    Underwood,  New    York) 

FLOODING     GATUN'S     LOCK     CHAMBERS.    PREPARATORY 

TO     THE     PASSAGE     OF     THE     FIRST     VESSEL 

THROUGH    THE     CAXAL 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  113 

does  not  obtain  among  many  South  Americans.  On 
the  contrary,  the  mere  fact  that  B  "takes  A  up"  shows 
A  that  B  wants  to  buy,  and  incites  him  to  say,  "Oh,  no, 
I  could  never  sell  for  that." 

Colombia  offered  us  the  Zone  for  so  much,  and  we 
"took  her  up,"  and  she,  perceiving  that  we  were  eager 
to  close  the  deal,  replied,  in  true  South  American 
style:  "Oh,  no,  we  want  more."  To  have  completed 
the  deal  we  should  have  refused  the  offer  and  de- 
manded a  smaller  price,  and  kept  on  demanding  it, 
until  the  ten  millions  were  actually  paid  over  and  re- 
ceipted for.  Such  is  the  kindest  explanation  of  Colom- 
bia's action  in  refusing  to  ratify  the  Hay-Herran 
Treaty.  To  us,  it  looked  like  a  "hold  up,"  to  them 
it  was  their  way. 

The  delay  which  followed  was  both  long  and  irritat- 
ing. Then  came  a  revolution,  and  the  United  States 
immediately  recognized  the  rebels, — i.e.,  the  inhabi- 
tants of  that  strip  of  the  Isthmus  which  we  needed — 
and  made  a  treaty  with  them  which  provided  for  the 
building  of  the  canal. 

Quite  unjustly  our  government  has  been  accused  of 
fomenting  and  instigating  that  revolution.  Our  critics 
say,  "You  could  not  bring  Colombia  to  terms,  so  you 
worked  up  a  revolution  in  Panama,  supported  it,  and 
used  the  rebels  to  gain  your  own  ends."  Further,  they 
point  out  that  according  to  our  treaty  with  New 
Granada,  we  guaranteed,  "the  rights  of  sovereignty  and 
property  which  New  Granada  has  and  possesses  over 
said  territory."  ^ 

"Even  if  you  had  not  fomented  the  revolution," 
they  go  on,  "you  were  bound  to  do  all  you  could  to 
help  Colombia  suppress  it,  whereas  you  virtually  pre- 
vented that  nation  from  doing  anything  and  in  a  bare- 

*  No  one  should  form  an  opinion  about  this  matter  without  having  read 
chaps.  25,  26,  27  of  Bunau  Varilla's  Panama,  The  Creation,  Destruction 
and  Resurrection. 


114  THE  NEW  WORLD 

faced  way  recognized  the  rebels  as  a  fully  organized 
Republic  three  days  after  the  outbreak." 

What  have  we  to  say  to  this?  To  begin  with  we 
must  admit  that  we  changed  our  interpretation  of  a 
fifty-year  old  treaty.  In  his  "Four  Centuries  of  Pana- 
ma," Mr.  Johnson  explains  that  Mr.  Hay  told  Dr. 
Amador,  the  Panama  revolutionary  agent  in  New  York 
(when  questioned  by  Dr.  Amador  as  to  whether  our 
government  would  allow  Colombia  to  suppress  the 
Panamanians  if  they  revolted),  that  ''however  much 
the  United  States  might  sympathize  with  Panaman 
aspirations  for  liberty  and  independence,  and  however 
much  it  might  regret  or  even  resent  Colombia's  re- 
jection of  the  canal  treaty,  it  would  be  manifestly  im- 
possible for  this  government  to  give  any  aid  to  a 
revolutionary  enterprise,  or  to  commit  itself  with  any 
promises  in  advance.  It  would  scrupulously  fulfill  its 
duties  as  a  neutral,  and  would  inflexibly  maintain  its 
rights  and  privileges  under  the  Treaty  of  1846  with 
New  Granada.  Those  rights  and  privileges  included 
the  protection  of  free  neutral  transit  across  the  Isth- 
mus, and  the  guarantee  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  land 
against  alien  aggression,  though,  of  course,  it  did  not 
guarantee  Colombian  possession  of  the  Isthmus  against 
local  and  domestic  revolution.  But  the  United  States 
could  give  no  promises  to,  and  make  no  treaties  with, 
a  government  which  was  not  yet  in  existence."  ^ 

In  justification  of  Mr.  Hay's  attitude  his  biographer, 
Mr.  Thayer,  says :  *'The  very  critics  who  were  so  sen- 
sitive over  the  wrongs  of  the  Filipinos  fighting  for  their 
freedom,  had  been  strangely  stony  toward  the  Pana- 
manians, who  also  desired  their  liberty.  Granted  that 
the  Panamanians  may  not  have  been  on  a  higher  moral 
plane  than  the  Colombians,  ought  we  to  ignore  the 
fact  that  their  cause  was  worthy,  and  that  of  the 

*  Johnson,  Four  Centuries  of  Panama,  p.  169.  See  all  of  chapters 
9  and  10  for  a  discussion  of  the  proceedings. 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  115 

Colombians  was  odious  ?  Let  us  at  least  be  consistent. 
If  those  who  conspire  for  liberty  in  Manila  are  heroes 
and  martyrs,  we  must  not  dismiss  those  who  conspire 
for  liberty  at  Colon  as  outlaws."  ^ 

Two  further  quotations  should  be  given  to  clear  up 
the  matter.  Here  is  what  Mr.  Roosevelt,  who  directed 
the  negotiations  without  much  reference  to  his  Secre- 
tary of  State,  wrote  to  Mr.  Thayer  in  1915: 

To  talk  of  Colombia  as  a  responsible  Power  to  be  dealt 
with  as  we  would  deal  with  Holland  or  Belgium  or  Switzer- 
land or  Denmark  is  a  mere  absurdity.  The  analogy  is  with 
a  group  of  Sicilian  or  Calabrian  bandits ;  with  Villa  and  Car- 
ranza  at  this  moment.  You  could  no  more  make  an  agree- 
ment with  the  Colombian  rulers  than  you  could  nail  currant 
jelly  to  a  wall — and  the  failure  to  nail  currani  jelly  to  a  wall 
is  not  due  to  the  nail;  it  is  due  to  the  currant  jelly.  I  did 
my  best  to  get  them  to  act  straight.  Then  I  determined  I 
would  do  what  ought  to  be  done  without  regard  to  them. 
The  people  of  Panama  were  a  unit  in  desiring  the  Canal  and 
in  wishing  to  overthrow  the  rule  of  Colombia.  If  they  had 
not  revolted,  I  should  have  recommended  Congress  to  take 
possession  of  the  Isthmus  by  force  of  arms;  and,  as  you  will 
see,  I  had  actually  written  the  first  draft  of  my  Message  to 
this  effect.  When  they  revolted,  I  promptly  used  the  navy 
to  prevent  the  bandits,  who  had  tried  to  hold  us  up,  from 
spending  months  of  futile  bloodshed  in  conquering,  or  en- 
deavoring to  conquer,  the  Isthmus,  to  the  lasting  damage  of 
the  Isthmus,  of  us,  and  of  the  world.  I  did  not  consult  Hay, 
or  Root,  or  any  one  else  as  to  what  I  did,  because  a  council 
of  war  does  not  fight;  and  1  intended  to  do  the  job  once  for 
all.2 

Finally,  the  following  summing  up  of  the  situation 
is  worthy  of  repetition,  since  it  voices  the  opinions  of 
many  who  knew  all  about  the  conditions  and  problems : 

To^  sum  up.  So  far  as  I  know,  the  apologists  of  the  Co- 
lombians have  never  brought  forward  a  single  fact  that  pal- 
liates, much  less  excuses,  the  acts  of  the  dominant  ring  at 
Bogota  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  this  affair.     That 


^Thayer,  The  Life  of  John  Hay,  II,  p.  313. 
*  Op.  cit.,  II,  p.  327. 


116  THE  NEW  WORLD 

ring  was  moved  by  the  instinct  of  blackmailers,  one  of  the 
lowest  of  human  instincts,  because  it  combines  fraud  and 
cowardice.  By  the  Treaty  of  1846  the  Colombians  were  bound 
to  grant  a  charter  for  an  Isthmian  Canal;  and  the  price  to 
be  paid  by  the  United  States  for  this  charter  was  to  be 
settled  by  mutual  agreement.  They  broke  that  obligation  in 
refusing  to  accept  the  terms  which  their  agent,  Dr.  Herran, 
negotiated;  yet  those  terms  must  have  been  communicated  to 
him  from  Bogota,  and  the  government  which  sent  them  must 
have  thought  at  the  time  of  sending  that  they  were  ample. 
It  went  further  and  showed  no  intention  of  making  any 
other  proposal.  .  .  .  How  exorbitant  their  demands  were, 
and  how  shameless  they  were  themselves,  appeared  when, 
having  lost  Panama,  they  offered  to  sell  out  to  the  United 
States  for  eight  million  dollars,  and  even  for  five  million, 
all  the  rights  for  which  in  their  greed  they  had  demanded 
twenty-five  million.  At  the  end  of  October,  with  the  trucu- 
lence  of  blackmailers  who  suppose  they  have  their  victim  at 
their  mercy,  they  demanded  the  twenty-five  millions;  but  by 
the  middle  of  December  they  were  begging  for  five. 

Although  their  action  was  odious,  we  must  ask  whether 
blackmailers  have  no  rights,  even  when  they  deny  the  rights 
of  others.  Must  we  not  keep  faith  even  with  the  faithless? 
The  laws  of  each  civilized  state  recognize  that  the  rights 
of  individuals  may  be  set  aside  by  the  State  for  the  prosecu- 
tion of  works  of  great  public  importance;  but  this  law  of 
eminent  domain  in  international  affairs  does  not  exist.  When 
we  were  building  the  transcontinental  railways  we  should 
never  have  allowed  a  tribe  of  Modocs  or  of  Apaches,  who 
happened  to  occupy  territory  through  which  the  line  was  to 
go,  to  block  the  construction;  if  they  had  attempted  to  resist 
we  should  have  driven  them  off.  So  if  some  villages  of 
Cretins  had  stood  at  the  Swiss  entrance  of  the  Simplon  Tun- 
nel, they  would  have  been  removed.  In  such  cases  the  proper 
action  is  self-evident.  But  where  shall  we  draw  the  line 
between  right  action  and  injustice  and  brutality?  How  shall 
we  escape  from  justifying  the  shockingly  cynical  treatment  of 
Inferior  by  Superior  peoples?  Evidently,  each  case  must  be 
decided  on  its  merits.  Morally,  the  Colombians  were  Cretins, 
but  with  the  rapacity  of  wild  Indians.  The  Canal  which  the 
American  Government  planned  was  for  the  benefit  of  the 
entire  world.  Should  the  blackmailing  greed  of  the  Bogota 
ring  stand  in  the  way  of  civilization?  I  believe  there  is  only 
one  answer  to  this  question— blackmailers  must  not  be  toler- 
ated; but  I  believe  also  that  it  is  so  important  that  respect 
for  legality  should  never  be  undermined  that  it  would  have 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  117 

been  better  if  the  United  States  had  openly  given  notice 
that  they  intended  to  take  the  Canal  Zone  rather  than  to  have 
it  appear  that  they  were  conniving  at  a  conspiracy.^ 

THE  CHURCH   IN   PANAMA 

Our  work  in  the  Canal  Zone  was  begun,  not  as  is 
usually  thought  by  the  Church  of  England,  but  by 
ourselves.  Mr.  Tracy  Robinson,  a  resident  for  fifty 
years  in  the  Isthmus,  in  his  book  on  that  subject^ 
tells  of  the  beginnings  as  follows: 

The  beautiful  building,  Christ  Church,  erected  on  the  beach 
at  Colon  at  a  cost  of  $75,000  by  the  Panama  Railroad  Com- 
pany, assisted  by  private  subscriptions,  is  a  monument  alike 
to  the  liberal  spirit  that  prompted,  and  the  tolerance  that  per- 
mitted and  encouraged  it. 

It  was  built  in  1864  by  Mr.  Weeks,  a  New  York  contractor ; 
and  was  consecrated  to  the  Episcopal  service  by  the  late 
Bishop  Alonzo  Potter,  of  Pennsylvania,  in  June,  1865,  when 
that  distinguished  prelate  was  on  his  way  from  New  York 
to  California,  as  guest  of  the  Pacific  Mail  Company  in  one 
of  their  new  steamers  via  the  Straits  of  Magellan.  During 
the  few  days*  delay  at  Panama,  the  bishop  came  over  to 
Colon,  and  performed  the  ceremony  of  consecration,  in  which 
I  had  the  honor  of  being  one  of  the  sponsors.  He  returned 
the  following  morning  to  the  ship  in  Panama  Bay;  and  sad 
to  relate,  the  fatigue  and  unusual  excitements  of  the  Isthmian 
journey  brought  on  illness  which  resulted  in  the  good  man's 
death  on  arrival  in  the  harbor  of  San  Francisco. 

The  church  long  remained  in  the  Diocese  of  New  York, 
but  was  transferred  to  that  of  Honduras,  over  which  Bishop 
Ormsby,  of  the  Church  of  England,  presided.  .   .   . 

Among  the  earlier  rectors  were  Rev.  Messrs.  Major, 
Temple,  Bancroft,  Tullidge,  Knapp,  and  Henson,  with  all  of 
whom  I  had  pleasant  acquaintance. 

It  was  shortly  after  the  French  had  begun  their 
work  upon  the  canal  that  this  building  and  the  work 
generally  were  transferred  to  the  English  diocese  of 
British  Honduras. 

>  Op.  cit.,  II,  pp.  328  ff. 

*  Robinson,  Fifty  Years  at  Panama,  pp.  229-231. 


118  THE  NEW  WORLD 

That  part  of  the  Central  American  state  which  we 
call  British  Honduras  was  added  to  the  British  Do- 
minions in  1798,  but  no  Church  of  England  work — 
Other  than  government  chaplaincies — was  established 
there  until  1818.  The  Rev.  R.  Shaw  of  the  Society 
for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  had  resided  there 
between  1776  and  1785,  but  the  Society  had  refused 
to  make  a  grant  for  the  work  after  the  latter  date. 

In  1817,  the  magistrates  of  the  colony  asked  that 
ancient  and  honored  Society  for  a  grant  to  help  them 
complete  "a  very  handsome  Church  in  the  town  of 
Belize,"  and  received  two  hundred  pounds  for  that 
object  in  1818.  This  can  be  considered  the  official 
beginning  of  the  missionary  side  of  the  work  in  Central 
America. 

In  the  same  year  the  Church  Missionary  Society 
sent,  in  response  to  the  request  of  Chaplain  Arm- 
strong, a  second  chaplain,  a  schoolmaster  and  a  printer 
for  the  purpose  of  establishing  a  mission  among  the 
Mosquito  Indians.  This  second  chaplain  was  soon 
invalided  home,  however,  and  the  work  lay  dormant 
until  1824,  when,  by  the  creation  of  the  two  sees 
of  Jamaica  and  Barbadoes,  episcopal  supervision  be- 
came possible.  British  Honduras  was  made  a  part  of 
the  diocese  of  Jamaica.  Workers  were  subsequently 
sent  there  by  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 
Gospel.  In  1880  British  Honduras  "organized  itself 
on  the  base  of  a  separate  diocese,"  and  elected  Bishop 
Toger,  of  Jamaica,  as  their  bishop,  a  position  which 
he  retained  about  a  year.  Then,  by  the  advice  of  Arch- 
bishop Tait,  the  jurdisdiction  reverted  to  Jamaica.^ 

In  1882  the  Bishop  of  Jamaica— having  oversight  of  Hon- 
duras— brought  before  the  society  the  spiritual  condition  of 

'Another  attempt  to  make  a  separate  diocese  was  made  in  1891,  when 
the  Archdeacon  of  Antigua  was  consecrated  at  Barbados  as  Bishop  of 
Honduras.  (This  was  the  first  consecration  of  an  Anglican  Bishop  in 
the  West  Indies.)  The  new  bishop.  Holme,  was  shipwrecked  on  his  way 
to  Belize,  though,  and  died  shortly  after  reaching  there. 


80 »                                                                       SO-SO'I 

CAHIB  B  EA  N        y^yz/ 

SEA         ^.:^::^^     / 

1   /^l/^^     ) 

1                     ^/ — \i_JV\\                                     / 

±/(/l       /^i-l// Camp  BaTrd  J   ^jf 

V     i     ^(X<^atjl'll       ^r-> 

H    |F--^-^x^:C^^                  ^r' 

i       V-)              \                r^^K^^ 

(\    ^K,     "-< 

'V        a        /\ 

"•^.  ^^^^  \ 

\               V      "^^ 

*N.              Einpire$s.               \, 

A             V^Parai$b^ 

9' 

1    v*S^                  \l^"58  y 

/    \     .La^Bocaf^^y 

9 

\f    Palo^Sec^A^'^^ 

'^a 

M^'^       BAY    OF 

CANAL  ZONE  C      fa^^ama. 

80°                                          e.   c.    brTooman,    mapb.    fvi.   v.       80*30' | 

fOlNTS    ALONG    THE    CANAL    WHERE    THE    CHURCH    IS 
CARRYING    ON    WORK 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  119 

the  laborers  on  the  Panama  Canal.  Over  15,000  Jamaicans 
and  others  from  various  parts  of  the  West  Indies,  besides 
Europeans  and  Americans,  were  employed  in  the  construc- 
tion of  the  Canal,  numbers  of  whom  were  "either  communi- 
cants or  followers  of  the  Church  of  England";  but  there 
was  no  one  to  minister  to  them.i  The  society  voted  two 
hundred  pounds  toward  the  payment  of  a  chaplain,  and  in 
November,  1883,  the  Bishop  sent  to  Colon,  the  first  point  on 
the  Atlantic  side,  the  Rev.  E.  B.  Key,  the  Rev.  S.  Kerr,  and 
a  catechist.  Mr.  Key,  after  assisting  in  organizing  the  Mis- 
sion, returned  to  Jamaica  (as  arranged),  leaving  Mr.  Kerr 
to  carry  on  the  work  with  the  aid  of  lay  agents.  Within 
twelve  months  a  chain  of  eight  stations  was  established, 
stretching  from  Colon  to  Panama.  The  people  attended  the 
services  in  large  numbers,  and  contributed  liberally  toward 
the  expenses  of  the  Mission.  In  1885  a  rebellion  broke  out, 
the  town  of  Colon  was  burnt,  and  Mr.  Kerr  had  to  with- 
draw for  a  time. 

For  some  months  the  beautiful  church  at  Colon  was  used 
as  a  guard  house  .  .  .  prison  and  hospital;  and  the  Com- 
munion table  .  ,  .  for  eating,  drinking,  and  gambling.  Until 
the  building  was  restored,  cleansed  and  renovated,  and  the 
city  rebuilt,  no  work  was  possible  in  the  city.  The  agents 
up  the  line,  however,  remained  at  their  posts,  and  at  no 
time  were  ministrations  altogether  suspended.  In  October, 
1885,  Christ  Church  was  again  placed  in  Mr.  Kerr's  charge, 
and  the  Mission  has  been  continued  with  good  results.^ 

Though  the  French  attempt  to  make  the  canal  was 
given  up  in  1888,  the  need  for  the  Church's  services 
remained,  and  the  Bishop  of  Jamaica  continued  in 
charge.  Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  under  the  auspices 
of  the  Church  of  England,  missionary  work  in  Colon 
and  Panama  and  intermediate  points  was  continued 
until  the  time  of  the  American  occupation. 

When  the  United  States  appeared  upon  the  scene, 
as  was  to  have  been  expected,  the  Church  of  England 
ceded  jurisdiction  back  to  the  American  Church.  The 
property  which  thus  came  into  our  possession  con- 

*  The  records  of  these  days  are  difficult  to  obtain,  and  we  can  only 
assume  that  at  the  time  of  the  Bishop  of  Jamaica's  visitation  the  Ameri- 
cans  had   left   Christ    Church  vacant. 

*  Digest  of  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  Records, 
1701-1892,  pp.  240,  241. 


120  THE   NEW   WORLD 

sisted  of  the  churches  in  Colon  and  Panama  City  and 
two  chapels,  one  at  Mt.  Hope  and  one  at  Bas  Obispo, 
along  the  line  of  canal  operations.  We  came  into  the 
use  of  several  other  buildings  at  the  same  time,  but 
title  to  these  was  held  by  the  Commission.^  It  was 
through  the  courtesy  of  the  Most  Rev.  Enos  Nuttall, 
Archbishop  of  the  West  Indies,  and  of  the  Right  Rev. 
G.  A.  Ormsby,  Bishop  of  Honduras,  that  these  ar- 
rangements were  satisfactorily  made. 

At  once  on  our  assuming  control  and  pending  the 
election  of  an  American  Bishop  of  Panama,  the  Presid- 
ing Bishop,  acting  as  Provisional  Bishop,  appointed  the 
Bishop  of  Washington  as  his  commissary.  It  was 
soon  discovered,  though,  that  as  the  Bishop  of  Wash- 
ington could  rarely  visit  the  Isthmus  it  would  be  neces- 
sary to  request  the  Bishop  of  Honduras  to  give  such 
episcopal  oversight  as  he  could.  This  he  kindly  con- 
sented to  do,  and  visited  the  Isthmus  in  the  summer 
of  1906,  holding  six  confirmations,  two  ordinations, 
and  dedicating  one  church  building.  He  reported  that 
the  population  of  the  Isthmus  at  the  time  was  seventy 
thousand,  about  thirty  thousand  of  whom  were  em- 
ployed on  the  canal  works,  and  that  many  of  them 
were  English-speaking  negroes  from  the  West  Indies 
who  were  members  of  the  Church  of  England.  He 
urged  the  immediate  appointment  of  three  American 
clergy,  one  to  take  charge  of  the  missions  along  the 
route  of  the  canal,  one  to  establish  a  congregation  at 
Cristobal,  a  suburb  of  Colon,  and  a  third  to  act  as 
assistant  to  the  rector  of  Christ  Church,  Colon,  which 
Church,  together  with  the  Church  in  Panama,  by  the 

*  A  scheme  proposed  by  the  English  is  now  under  consideration, 
whereby  the  foreign  jurisdiction  of  the  entire  Diocese  of  Honduras 
shall  be  transferred  to  the  Church  in  America.  According  to  it,  the 
Bishop  of  Honduras  would  continue  his  oversight  of  the  northern  part 
of  Central  America,  retaining  his  own  diocese  as  at  present,  but  becom- 
ing an  agent  of  the  American  Church  at  such  times  as  he  might  go 
outside  those  portions  of  his  diocese  over  which  the  British  flag  flies. 
See  O'Rorke,  Our  Opportunity  in  the  West  Indies,  p.  84. 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  121 

concordat  made  with  the  Church  of  England  had  been 
transferred  to  the  American  jurisdiction.  He  further 
reported  that  there  was  good  reason  to  believe  that 
when  the  American  Church  really  took  up  the  work 
the  Canal  Commission  would  be  glad  to  help  in  several 
ways.^ 

For  one  reason  or  another  it  took  a  long  time  to  get 
the  work  really  started.  Although  actual  operations 
on  the  canal  had  begun  on  May  4,  1904,  it  was  not 
until  October,  1907,  that  anyone  volunteered  for  ser- 
vice. The  Rev.  H.  B.  Bryan,  coming  forward  then, 
was  appointed  Archdeacon  of  Panama  by  the  Presid- 
ing Bishop.  He  arrived  at  Colon  on  the  10th  of 
November.  Following  him  the  Rev.  E.  J.  Cooper  went 
out  in  1908  to  take  charge  of  Christ  Church,  Colon.^ 

Upon  the  death  of  the  Bishop  of  Washington  (H.  Y. 
Satterlee)  in  1908,  the  Presiding  Bishop  made  the 
Bishop  of  Cuba  (A.  W.  Knight)  his  commissary  to 
care  for  and  supervise  the  work  in  the  Canal  Zone. 
Provided  at  last  with  full  and  workable  ecclesiastical 
machinery  the  mission  took  on  new  life. 

It  is  not  for  us  to  detail  the  story  of  the  Church's 
work  in  the  Zone.    Rather  should  we  try  to  indicate  its 

*  The  full  report  of  the  Bishop  can  be  found  in  Appendix  K  to  the 
1905-6  Foreign  Report  of  the   Board   of   Missions. 

*  A  full  list  of  the  workers  up  to  date  is  as  follows: 

1907 — The  Yen.  H.  B,  Bryan,  appointed  Archdeacon  of  Panama. 
1908 — Rev.  E.  J.  Cooper,*  Christ  Church,  Colon;  still  in  the  mission. 

Rev.  G.   C.   Eskins    St.   Paul's  Church,  Panama;    retired   1908. 

Rev.  J.   F.   Calm,  Locum-tenens  Missionary;   retired   1908. 

Rev.   T.  T.   Mulcare,  West  Indian  deacon;   still  in   the  mission. 
1909 — Rev.  W.   Cross,   Cristobal;    retired   September  20,    1910. 

Rev.  W.  H.  Decker,   Empire;  transferred  to  Cuba  in  1913. 

Rev.  A.   S.  Peck,*   Culebra;   retired  May   1,    1911. 
1910— Rev.  H.  A.  Brown,*  Chaplain  U.  S.  A.,  Archdeacon;  retired  1913. 
1911— Rev.  J.  R.  Bicknell,*  Chaplain  U.  S.  A.,  Ancon;  retired  1912. 

Rev.  J.    F.    Griffith,   New   Gatun;   transferred   to   British   Guiana 
in  1914. 
1912 — Rev.  H.   C.   Carson,*  Ancon;   still  in  the  mission. 
1915 — Rev.  A.   F.  Nightingale,  Panama, 

Present  staff:  The  Rt.  Rev.  Dr.  Knight,  Bishop  in  charge;  Rev. 
Messrs.  H.  R.  Carson,  Ancon;  E,  T.  Cooper,  Colon;  J.  T 
Mulcare,   La    Boca;   A.    F.    Nightingale,    Panama. 

*  Not  supported  by  the  board. 


122  THE  NEW  WORLD 

chief  features.  To  begin  with,  unlike  anything  else 
that  the  Church  has  as  yet  undertaken  an  elerncnt 
of  temporariness  has  predominated  at  many  points. 
A  majority  of  those  to  whom  we  went  to  minister, 
for  example,  were  on  the  ground  for  only  a  short 
time.  Again,  many  of  the  sites  on  which  chapels  were 
built  are  now  many  feet  below  the  surface  of  the 
water. 

In  the  first  year  about  six  thousand  young  men 
went  down  to  the  Zone  seeking  their  fortunes,  of 
whom  but  a  few  regarded  their  jobs  as  anything  but 
short-time  services.  Among  them  were  a  large  number 
of  college  graduates  and  men  who  had  been  ac- 
customed to  the  ministrations  of  the  Church  at  home. 
To  them  we  certainly  owed  a  duty,  and  if  any  find 
fault  with  the  work  on  the  ground  that  it  was  not 
worth  while  doing  so  much  for  transients,  we  can 
only  reply  that  the  friends  and  relations  of  the  six 
thousand  were  very  glad  that  the  steadying  influence 
of  the  Church  was  near  them. 

Another  unusual  aspect  of  the  Panama  undertaking 
is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  the  Church  and  State 
worked  hand  in  hand.  Accustomed  as  we  are  to  the 
American  fear  of  a  State  Church,  it  comes  at  first 
as  a  surprise  to  learn  that  the  canal  Commissioners 
provided  us  with  land  and  buildings  in  many  instances. 
This  is  to  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  when  they 
imported  a  great  number  of  West  Indian  laborers 
the  commissioners  guaranteed  to  them  free  schools  and 
churches.  Perhaps,  one  is  tempted  to  speculate,  had 
the  settlements  possessed  a  more  permanent  character 
these  things  could  not  have  been  done  without  much 
difficulty,  if  at  all.  At  all  events,  the  fact  that  they 
were  done  gives  us  cause  for  considerable  satis- 
faction. 

In  undertaking  to  build  the  canal  the  United  States 
went  about  it  in  a  true  spirit  of  humanitarianism.  It 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  123 

realized  that  it  was  doing  something  for  the  good  of 
the  world.  It  was  only  proper  therefore,  that,  since 
the  object  of  its  efforts  was  the  good  of  humanity,  the 
small  fraction  of  humanity  which  was  engaged  in  the 
operations  should  be  cared  for  in  a  Christian  way. 

Not  only  did  the  Commissioners  remember  that  the 
men's  bodies  should  be  cared  for;  they  remembered 
also  that  their  spiritual  needs  must  be  met.  We  have 
just  reason  to  be  proud  of  the  broad  vision  of  those 
in  authority  and  to  be  glad  that  the  Church  had  such 
a  splendid  opportunity  to  co-operate  with  them. 

Parenthetically,  it  is  interesting  in  this  connection 
to  speculate  as  to  what  the  effect  of  such  govern- 
ment aid  would  have  been  under  conditions  less  tem- 
porary. For  example,  suppose  the  government  had 
helped  us  build  churches  in  the  growing  West,  what 
would  have  been  the  result?  Probably,  we  are  in- 
clined to  believe,  anywhere  else  and  under  any  other 
conditions  such  assistance  would  have  had  unfortunate 
results,  since  men  and  women  cannot  afford  to  be 
deaf  to  the  warning  of  Araunah  and  use  churches 
which  have  cost  them  nothing. 

Such,  in  brief,  are  the  conditions  under  which 
Bishop  Knight  and  his  clergy  worked.  And  a  great 
work  they  did,  as  will  be  evidenced  by  the  following 
account  of  a  visitation  made  by  the  bishop  in  January, 

It  was  a  busy  ten  days.  The  Bishop  landed  in  Colon  at 
noon  on  Sunday,  December  31st.  At  7.30  that  night,  in 
Christ  Church,  Colon,  he  confirmed  fifty-nine.  That  same 
night  the  Bishop  preached  at  a  watch-night  service  in  Christ 
Church. 

On  Monday  night  he  confirmed  at  New  Gatun  a  class  of 
seventy-two.  On  Tuesday  night  he  visited  St.  Mark's  Church, 
Culebra,  where  he  confirmed  a  class  of  twenty-one,  and  on 
Wednesday  night  at  Paraiso,  he  confirmed  fifteen.  On  Thurs- 
day night  he  visited  St.  Paul's  Church,  Panama,  where  he 
confirmed  a  class  of  thirty-five. 


124  THE  NEW  WORLD 

On  Saturday  morning  the  clergy  and  catechists  assembled 
at  St.  Mark's  Church,  Culebra,  for  a  short  conference,  after 
which  the  Rev.  J.  T.  Mulcare  was  advanced  to  the  priest- 
hood. 

On  Sunday  morning  the  Bishop  celebrated  the  Holy  Com- 
munion in  the  Commission  Chapel  at  Culebra,  and  at  10.45 
consecrated  St.  Mary's  Church,  Empire.  At  2.30  he^  con- 
firmed twenty-six  persons  at  Bas  Obispo,  and  at  six  o'clock 
held  a  service  for  the  marines  at  Camp  Elliott.  At  7.45  he 
confirmed  a  class  of  thirty-one  at  St.  James's  Church,  Empire. 
On  Monday  night  he  confirmed  eighteen  persons  at  Las  Cas- 
cadas,  and  sixteen  on  Tuesday  night  at  Gorgona.  Wednes- 
day night  the  Bishop  was  at  St.  Luke's  Hospital  Chapel  at 
Ancon,  and  on  Thursday  morning  crossed  the  Isthmus  to 
Colon,  where,  after  a  short  service,  he  sailed  for  Haiti. 

Altogether  two  hundred  and  eighty-three  persons  were  con- 
firmed, and  over  five  thousand  listened  to  the  Bishop's  ser- 
mons. 

The  work  here  is  in  splendid  condition.  During  the  last 
twelve  months  there  have  been  over  one  thousand  baptisms. 
Every  community  is  supplied  with  one  or  more  places  of 
worship,  while  we  now  have  six  priests  and  one  deacon,  who, 
together  with  the  ten  catechists,  hold  regular  services  in 
fifteen  different  places.^ 

In  1915  the  canal  was  opened  and  the  era  of  large 
operations  came  to  an  end.  After  his  visit  to  the  Zone, 
in  the  summer  of  1915,  Bishop  Knight  wrote: 

Conditions  on  the  Isthmus  have  settled  to  the  point  where 
it  is  possible  to  form  some  idea  of  what  will  need  attention 
in  the  future.  Many  of  the  missions  which  existed  during 
the  active  construction  period,  when  it  was  almost  one  con- 
tinuous village  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  have  dis- 
appeared with  the  letting  in  of  the  water.  Some  of  our 
largest  and  most  active  mission  stations  are  now  beneath  the 
water,  and  ships  sail  over  localities  where  church  edifices 
stood.  The  policy  of  concentration  at  the  ends  of  the  canal 
brought  forth  orders  to  close  missions  and  remove  buildings, 
and  as  the  lands  upon  which  these  buildings  stood  were 
occupied  only  on  sufferance,  no  other  alternative  remained. 

Among  the  buildings  ordered  removed  were  those  at  Gatun, 
Gorgona,  Bas  Obispo,  Las  Cascadas,  Empire,  Culebra,  Pedro 

*  Spirit   of   Missions,    March,    1912. 


NEW  RESPONSIBILITIES  125 

Miguel  and  Mt.  Hope,  and  these  have  been  all  removed  or 
sold  at  a  great  sacrifice.  Las  Cascadas,  Empire  and  Culebra 
were  given  over  to  the  army  as  garrisons,  as  these  three 
villages  were  not  flooded ;  but  all  civilians  were  removed 
excepting  such  as  were  necessary  for  the  domestic  service 
of  the  army  officers.  Two  new  towns  were  established  at 
the  Pacific  end,  Balboa  and  La  Boca,  the  former  for  the 
administrative  officers  of  the  canal  and  Zone  Government,  the 
latter  for  the  negro  laborers.  These  two  towns  are  model 
villages,  well  laid  out,  and  have  every  modern  improvement. 
It  would  seem,  therefore,  that  the  church's  permanent  work 
was  to  be  confined  to  the  cities  of  Panama,  Colon,  and  the 
American  towns  of  Ancon,  Balboa  and  La  Boca. 

With  this  understanding,  we  began  to  concentrate  on  these 
points,  but  it  was  soon  found  that  a  number  of  laborers 
were  required  to  operate  the  locks,  so  small  settlements  of 
West  Indian  negroes  were  allowed  to  remain  at  Gatun  and 
Paraiso.  The  army  people  have  their  own  chaplains,  and  it 
happens  that  not  one  of  the  three  chaplains  assigned  to  the 
Isthmus  at  present  is  of  our  Church;  but  as  by  far  the 
majority  of  the  West  Indian  negroes  are  of  the  English 
Church,  it  became  necessary  to^  maintain  services  for  them. 
At  the  request  of  the  commanding  officer  at  Empire  services 
have  been  resumed.  As  our  buildings  had  been  removed  or 
sold  we  had  no  place  of  our  own  in  which  to  conduct  these 
services.  A  suitable  building,  however,  has  been  provided  by 
the  army  authorities  at  Empire,  which  is  sufficiently  near  to 
Las  Cascadas  and  Culebra  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  colored 
people.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Colonel  Morton  ordered 
a  census  taken  of  the  negroes  employed  by  the  army  and 
it  was  found  that  fully  eighty  per  cent,  were  attached  to 
the  Episcopal  Church,  and  almost  all  asked  for  the  services 
of  that  church,  if  only  one  were  to  be  permitted  to  occupy 
the  field.  This  order  has  been  issued,  and  we  alone  main- 
tain services  for  these  people. 

The  chapel  at  Paraiso  was  not  ordered  removed,  and  was 
the  only  one  we  had  left  in  the  Zone.  Here  services  have 
been  regularly  maintained  for  the  negroes.  At  the  Gatun 
Locks  the  authorities  have  assigned  a  building  to  us  for 
services.  These  actions  are  a  tacit  recognition  of  the  help 
the  Church  has  been  to  the  authorities  during  the  construction 
of  the  canal ;  for  the  West  Indian  negro  is  not  content  to 
remain  where  he  cannot  have  the  services  of  his  Church. 


To  sum  up  we  give  the  following  list  of  the  missions 


126  THE   NEW   WORLD 

on  the  Isthmus  as  compiled  by  Bishop  Knight,  April, 
1916. 

Panama  City Church  building,  St.  Paul's,  owned  by 

the  Church. 
Ancon Hospital    chapel,    St.    Luke's,    under 

control  of  the  Church. 
La  Boca Church,  St.  Peter's  by  the  Sea,  and 

rectory,  owned  by  the  Church. 
Palo  Seco Chapel,   Holy  Comforter,  owned  by 

the  Government. 
Paraiso Chapel,  St.  Augustine's,  owned  by  the 

Church. 

Empire Chapel,  owned  by  the  Government. 

Gatun. ^ Chapel,  owned  by  the  Government. 

Camp  Baird,  Cristobal..  Chapel,  owned  by  the  Government. 
Colon. .Church,  Christ  Church,  owned  by  the 

Church. 

The  chaplain  of  the  Ancon  Hospital  has  charge  of 
the  work  at  Ancon,  Panama,  Paraiso,  Palo  Seco  and 
Gatun.  The  resident  clergymen  at  La  Boca  cares  for 
it  and  Empire.  The  rector  of  Colon  takes  care  of  the 
work  at  Camp  Baird. 


CHAPTER   V 

NEAR  NEIGHBORS 

CUBA 

The  island  of  Cuba  was  brought,  technically  speak- 
ing, within  the  Spanish  Empire  when  Diego  Velazquez 
was  appointed  its  governor  in  the  year  1512.  For  the 
387  years  that  followed  it  was  the  pearl  of  Spain's 
West  Indian  possessions.  Its  size,  its  fertility  and 
its  natural  wealth  made  it  a  colony  of  greatest  value. 
Its  soil  produced  the  finest  tobacco  and  sugar  in  the 
world.  Its  forest  lands  covered  a  million  and  a  quarter 
of  acres.  In  its  mines,  copper  and  manganese  and  iron 
were  found,  and  best  of  all,  though  a  tropical  country, 
its  climate  was  agreeable. 

But  though  the  land  was  fair  and  overflowing  with 
milk  and  honey,  and  though  so  far  as  nature  went 
there  was  every  reason  for  peace  and  tranquillity, 
quite  an  opposite  state  of  affairs  prevailed.  The 
Spaniard  had  not  been  wise  in  his  colonial  policy  and 
the  colonists,  like  those  who  threw  the  tea  of  the 
equally  unwise  English  into  Boston  Harbor,  were  dis- 
contented. As  a  matter  of  fact  there  was  no  general 
island-wide  revolution  until  the  last  decade  of  the  last 
century,  but  local  disturbances  had  abounded,  and 
great  had  been  the  misery  therefrom.  One  of  our  first 
workers  wrote  home  in  the  nineties  that  it  was  gen- 
erally believed  that  150,000  Spanish  infantry  had  been 
lost  in  guerilla  wars.  Evidently  the  milk  and  honey 
of  the  promised  land  had  turned  to  gall. 

127 


128  THE   NEW   WORLD 

The  clash  of  arms  in  which  we  are  interested  is 
that  one  which  began  in  1895  and  which  ended  in  the 
separation  of  the  island  from  Spain.  The  story  as  it 
affects  us  is  briefly  as  follows : 

General  Campos  was  in  command  of  the  Spanish 
forces  at  the  beginning  of  this  revolt  of  1895,  but  his 
wily  antagonist,  Maximo  Gomez,  had  defied  and  all 
but  defeated  him, — exactly  as  the  Boer  commanders 
taunted  and  all  but  defeated  the  British  in  South 
Africa.  In  the  beginning  of  1896,  Campos  had  been 
recalled  and  as  his  successor  Valeriano  Weyler  had 
been  sent  out, — Weyler,  who  subsequently  was  known 
among  the  Cubans  as  'The  Butcher."  This  new  gen- 
eral and  his  policy  are  important  to  us  since  it  was  due 
to  his  merciless  methods  that  the  condition  of  affairs 
in  Cuba  was  forced  upon  the  attention  of  the  United 
States.  The  reconcentrado  system  enforced  by  him, 
in  fact,  gave  Cuba  a  worldwide  notoriety.  It  would 
appear,  to  be  perfectly  fair,  that  the  Cubans  them- 
selves were  responsible  for  the  invention  of  this  system, 
but  they  never  carried  it  to  the  limits  adopted  by 
Weyler. 

The  reconcentration  system  entailed  the  gathering, 
under  compulsion,  of  all  the  inhabitants  of  certain 
districts  in  certain  places  within  a  given  number  of 
days.  This  accomplished,  nobody  was  allowed  to  leave 
those  centers  of  concentration  without  passes,  and 
these  passes  were  practically  never  granted.  This 
meant  that  not  only  were  complete  provinces  denuded 
of  their  inhabitants,  but  that  all  business  and  com- 
mercial establishments  were  closed,  and  all  food  pro- 
duction and  agricultural  operations  within  these 
provinces  abandoned.  In  the  words  of  President  Mc- 
Kinley,  "It  was  not  civilized  warfare,  it  was  extermi- 
nation. The  only  peace  it  could  beget  was  that  of  the 
wilderness  and  the  grave." 

News  of  this  procedure  spread  abroad  quickly,  and 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  129 

Cuban  relief  committees  sprang  up  in  many  parts  of 
the  United  States.  The  President  was  importuned  by 
vociferous  editors  to  intervene,  but  according  to  all 
the  laws  of  diplomacy  he  could  do  nothing.  Finally 
the  situation  became  so  bad  that  Weyler  was  recalled 
and  a  less  rigid  disciplinarian,  Blanco,  sent  out  in 
his  stead.  But  it  was  too  late.  Humane  as  Blanco 
endeavored  to  be,  his  predecessor's  work  had  been  only 
too  effectual  and  the  suffering  and  starvation  wrought 
by  it  continued. 

The  technical  point  which  had  prevented  the  United 
States  government  from  intervening  was  this :  Were 
the  Cuban  insur rectos  rebels,  or  not?  So  long  as  they 
were  rebels  and  had  no  real  government  of  their  own, 
the  United  States  could  not  intervene.  Perhaps  it 
should  also  be  added  that  in  international  affairs  it  has 
generally  been  conceded  that  that  nation  which  is 
nearest  to  a  people  in  turmoil,  and  hence  most  con- 
cerned, is  the  one  to  act,  if  action  is  justified. 

It  can  well  be  imagined  that  throughout  this  period 
the  relations  between  the  United  States  and  Spain  had 
been  anything  but  friendly.  The  press  of  this  country 
had  not  been  sparing  in  its  adjectives  and  the  diplo- 
mats had  had  continually  to  cross  large  patches  of  thin 
ice.  Some  of  the  more  violent  of  Cuba's  friends  had 
time  and  time  again  endeavored  to  bring  us  into  the 
war  on  the  side  of  the  islanders,  and  the  efforts  of  the 
Cuban  Junta  in  New  York  had  been  anything  but 
quieting. 

Finally,  on  the  fifteenth  of  February,  the  United 
States  battleship  Maine,  which  was  in  Havana  Harbor 
on  a  friendly  visit,  was  blown  up  as  she  lay  at  her 
mooring.  At  first,  everybody  imagined  that  she  had 
been  destroyed  by  Spaniards  in  retaliation  for  the 
campaign  of  hatred  which  had  been  waged  in  the 
States  against  Cuba's  colonial  government.  Calmer 
thought,  however,  showed  that  the  Cuban's  were  the 


130  THE   NEW   WORLD 

ones  who  had  profited  from  the  deed,  which  fact  made 
some  people  less  quick  to  come  to  conclusions.^  At 
all  events  the  loss  of  the  Maine  turned  out  very  happily 
for  the  insurrectos.!^  It  brought  on  the  Spanish- 
American  war  in  which  poor  old  Spain  was  hopelessly 
worsted  and  forced  to  retire  from  the  West  Indies 
and  the  Philippines. 

How  tempted  one  is  to  moralize  at  this  point.  Gone 
were  the  glories  of  Spain.  Lost  were  the  islands  which 
Columbus  had  found;  those  islands  whose  shores  the 
feet  of  the  Conquistadores  had  trodden ;  those  islands 
which  had  been  blessed  by  the  presence  of  the  saintly 
Las  Casas  and  the  Dominican  fathers;  those  islands 
from  which  bulging  ships  had  set  forth  with  their 
treasures  to  swell  the  fortunes  of  the  unwise  Philip: 
all  were  gone.  And  worst  of  all,  but  few  in  the  islands 
wept !  How  like  the  story  of  Babylon  and  Egypt  and 
Rome  and  the  Empire  of  Napoleon  1  Truly  *'our  little 
systems  have  their  day,"  and  truly  they  are  fools  who 
think  that  gold  and  silver  and  sword  and  pike,  or  the 
modern  12-inch  shell  and  submarine  can  make  a 
kingdom  which  will  last! 

After  the  downfall  of  the  old  regime,  the  United 
States  government,  in  order  to  forestall  a  period  of 
anarchy  which  seemed  probable  from  the  unwilling- 
ness of  the  victors  to  divide  the  spoil  quietly,  sent 
down  an  army  of  occupation.  That  our  intentions  were 
beneficent  is  proven  by  the  fact  that  though  we  spent 
millions  in  assisting  the  sufferers  and  in  improving 
conditions,  we  asked  but  little  in  return  when  we  gave 

*  The  destroyers  of  the  Maine  will  probably  never  be  known.  Sub- 
sequent investigations  removed  the  suspicion  that  the  vessel  had  been 
wrecked  by  an  explosion  in  one  of  her  own  magazines.  All  that  we 
know  is  that  the  explosion  came  from  without.  For  a  virtual  accusation 
that  this  was  not  so  see  I.  A.   Wright,  Cuba,  p.   169. 

^  Inasmuch  as  our  political  relations  to  Cuba  are  bound  up  in  the 
history  of  these  early  days,  the  student  should,  if  possible,  get  a  larger 
acquaintance  with  the  facts  than  can  be  given  here.  A  full  statement 
will  be   found   in  Robinson,   Cuba  and  the  Intervention. 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  131 

back  the  island  to  its  inhabitants.^  Oyer  three  rnillions 
was  spent  in  the  first  year  of  occupation  on  sanitation, 
while  within  the  same  period,  nine  hundred  and  ninety 
odd  thousand  was  spent  on  charities  and  in  aid  to  the 
destitute.  During  the  second  and  third  years  of  oc- 
cupation, similar  sums  were  spent  unselfishly.  Had 
ever  a  government  in  the  history  of  the  world  spent  in 
another  land  tens  of  millions,  given  of  the  lives  of  its 
citizens,  given  out  of  the  wealth  of  its  experience,  and 
at  the  end  of  that  time  asked  for  so  little  in  return? 
If  our  country  has  not  been  missionary-minded  in 
things  political,  who  has?  Truly  in  what  we  did  for 
Cuba  the  New  World  had  begun  to  make  the  labors  of 
Columbus  worth  while. 

The  end  of  our  first  great  missionary  act  as  a  nation 
came  on  the  20th  of  May,  1902,  and  was  signalized 
by  the  following  letter  from  General  Leonard  Wood, 
Military  Governor: 

Headquarters  Department  of  Cuba, 
Havana,  May  20,  1902. 
To  the  President  and  Congress  of  the  Republic  of  Cuba. 

Sirs :  Under  the  direction  of  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  I  now  transfer  to  you,  as  the  duly  elected  representative 
of  the  people  of  Cuba,  the  government  and  control  of  the 
Island;  to  be  held  and  exercised  by  you,  under  the  provisions 
of  the  Constitution  of  the  Republic  of  Cuba  heretofore 
adopted  by  the  Constitutional  Convention  and  this  day  pro- 
mulgated; and  I  hereby  declare  the  occupation  of  Cuba  by 
the  United  States  and  the  Military  Government  of  the  Island 
to  be  ended. 

This  transfer  of  government  and  control  is  upon  the  ex- 
press condition,  and  the  Government  of  the  United  States  will 
understand,  that  by  the  acceptance  thereof  you  do  now,  pur- 
suant to  the  provisions  of  the  said  Constitution,  assume  and 
undertake,  all  and  several,  the  obligations  assumed  by  the 
United  States  with  respect  to  Cuba,  by  the  treaty  between 
the  United  States  of  America  and  Her  Majesty  the  Queen 

*  Stephen  Bonsai  answers  eflFectively  the  retort  that  the  Piatt  Amend- 
ment was  a  large  quid  pro  quo.  See  his  The  American  Mediterranean, 
pp.  36-39. 


132  THE   NEW   WORLD 

Regent  of  Spain,  signed  at  Paris  on  the  10th  day  of  Decem- 
ber, 1899.  .   .    . 

Then  follow  nine  paragraphs  detailing  certain  finan- 
cial arrangements,  at  the  conclusion  of  which  comes 
this  paragraph: 

It  is  understood  by  the  United  States  that  the  present  gov- 
ernment of  the  Isle  of  Pines  will  continue  as  a  de  facto 
government,  pending  the  settlement  of  the  title  to  said  island 
by  treaty  pursuant  to  the  Cuban  Constitution  and  the  Act 
of  Congress  of  the  United  States  approved  March  2,  1902. 

(Signed)     Leonard  Wood, 

Military  Governor. 

In  reply  to  this  truly  astonishing  document, — aston- 
ishing because  in  the  whole  history  of  the  world  noth- 
ing of  the  kind  had  ever  been  done  before, — the  newly 
elected  Cuban  President,  T.  Estrada  Palma,  wrote  a 
letter  of  sincere  acknowledgment  which  concluded: 

I  take  this  solemn  occasion,  which  marks  the  fulfillment  of 
the  honored  promise  of  the  Government  and  people  of  the 
United  States  in  regard  to  the  Island  of  Cuba,  and  in  which 
our  country  is  made  a  ruling  nation,  to  express  to  you,  the 
worthy  representative  of  that  grand  people,  the  immense 
gratitude  which  the  people  of  Cuba  feel  toward  the  American 
nation,  toward  its  illustrious  President,  Theodore  Roosevelt, 
and  toward  you  for  the  efforts  you  have  put  forth  for  the 
successful  accomplishment  of  such  a  precious  ideal. 

(Signed)     T.  Estrada  Palma. 

Though  Cuba  was  thus  made  an  independent  nation, 
international  problems  and  possibilities  made  it  neces- 
sary that  the  United  States  should  in  the  first  place 
safeguard  that  independence,  and  in  the  second,  take 
such  steps  as  were  necessary  to  prevent  a  recurrence 
of  that  turmoil  which  has  too  often  afflicted  Latin 
peoples.  Hence,  the  passing  by  Congress  of  the  so- 
called  Piatt  Amendment,  which  provided  that  the 
government  of  Cuba  should  contract  never  to  barter 
away  its  independence  to  any  foreign  power ;  never  to 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  133 

allow  any  foreign  power  to  have  a  naval  or  military 
lodgment  in  its  territory ;  never  to  contract  any  debts 
which  it  could  not  pay.  Further  that  it  should  allow 
the  United  States  to  intervene  *'for  the  preservation 
of  Cuban  independence,  the  maintenance  of  a  govern- 
ment adequate  for  the  protection  of  life,  property  and 
individual  liberty" ;  and  should  omit  from  its  bound- 
aries the  Isle  of  Pines ;  and,  lastly,  should  embody  the 
foregoing  principles  in  a  treaty  with  the  United 
States.^ 

The  Piatt  amendment  must  be  understood  if  one 
is  to  know  about  the  relations,  political,  social,  and 
sentimental,  between  Cuba  and  the  United  States. 
How  our  government  could  have  done  any  less  without 
courting  grave  international  problems  it  is  hard  to  see. 
It  would  appear  to  have  been  wisdom's  ounce  of  pre- 
vention. It  merely  repeated  a  policy  to  which  we  were 
committed  in  the  days  of  Spanish  supremacy.  Never- 
theless, human  nature  is  human  nature  and  it  has 
created  a  great  deal  of  bitterness.  One  is  inclined 
to  believe,  however,  that  the  unpleasantness  caused  by 
the  Amendment  is  but  a  drop  in  the  bucket  compared 
to  the  troubles  which  might  have  come  if  we  had  not 
taken  such  action.  The  State  Department  knows  a 
lot  of  things  that  never  get  into  the  newspapers. 

Such  is  the  story  of  Cuba's  independence,  and  our 
participation  in  it.  When  one  studies  Cuban  life  and 
the  position  of  Americans  on  the  island,  this  political 
background  must  be  borne  in  mind,  since  it  qualifies 
every  circumstance  and  situation. 

CUBA  OF  TO-DAY 

The  population  of  the  new  Republic  is  about  two 
and  a  half  millions.  The  area  of  the  island  being  44,- 
164  square  miles,  we  see  that  the  density  of  its  popu- 

»0p.  cit.,  pp.  245-257. 


134  THE   NEW   WORLD 

lation  (56  to  the  square  mile)  is  nothing  com- 
pared to  that  of  Porto  Rico.  In  fact  one  of  the  first 
points  which  one  encounters  in  studying  Cuban  prob- 
lems is  its  comparative  under  population.  Russia  has 
61  to  the  square  mile.  Of  course,  in  the  United  States 
we  have  only  about  31,  but  then  everyone  .knows  that 
we  are  thinly  settled.  Further,  when  one  considers  the 
fertility  of  the  soil  and  the  immense  number  of  people 
which  it  could  support,  the  issue  becomes  clearer.  In 
those  half-mythical  days  of  the  far  future,  when  the 
population  of  the  northern  zones  becomes  cumber- 
some, that  elongated  island — it  is  over  seven  hundred 
miles  long  and  only  about  seventy  wide — of  vast  fer- 
tility and  tolerable  climate  is  certain  to  become  a 
haven  of  refuge  for  many.  Since  it  can  feed  many 
more  people  than  Belgium,  and  since  Belgium  now 
has  589  to  the  square  mile,  it  is  not  unreasonable  to 
dream,  as  some  do,  of  a  day  when  Cuba's  population 
will  be  over  ten  millions.  Verily,  a  contingency  to  be 
prepared   for. 

As  to  the  general  condition  of  the  Cubans:  there 
is  no  occasion  to  use  superlatives.  According  to  the 
census  returns  of  1907,  sixty-nine  per  cent,  of  them 
could  read.  To-day,  under  the  new  government,  there 
are  2,344  school  houses  with  4,333  teachers,  with 
over  275,000  pupils  on  tiie  rolls.  At  the  apex  of  the 
educational  system  is  the  University  of  Havana,  which 
is  divided  into  three  faculties,  of  Arts  and  Science, 
of  Medicine  and  Pharmacy,  and  of  Law.  The  most 
unusual  thing  in  this  University  is  that  the  Cuban 
Congress  regulates  and  dictates  the  rules  in  reference 
to  the  different  courses  of  study.  It  is  hard  to  imagine 
an  American  scholar  who  would  be  willing  to  accept 
a  position  in  an  institution  of  learning  over  which 
politicians  had  such  control. 

The  government  of  the  island  is  very  much  like 
our  own,  having  a  president,  cabinet,  and  a  national 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  135 

congress  made  up  of  a  Senate  (24  members,  4  for 
each  province),  and  a  House  of  Representatives  (91 
members,  1  for  every  25,000  of  the  inhabitants). 

Writing  from  Havana  in  the  winter  of  1915-16,  Dean 
Myers,  of  the  Cathedral,  speaks  of  the  present-day 
problems  as  follows: 

There  are  no  political  problems  in  Cuba,  in  the  American 
sense  of  that  term;  no  "tariff  question";  no  dispute  about 
a  centralized  or  non-centralized  government;  no  "prohibition" 
propaganda, — intemperance  is  not  a  problem  in  Cuba,  not- 
withstanding every  "bodega"  or  country  grocery  offers  liquor 
for  sale,  in  all  its  forms.  No  societies  harangue  about  "wom- 
an suffrage,"  although  there  has  been  a  perceptible  change 
from  the  seclusion  of  women  under  the  Spanish  regime,  and 
many,  old  and  young  alike,  are  taking  advantage  of  an  in- 
creased and  increasing  liberty  of  action,  such  as  going  unat- 
tended upon  the  streets,  or  in  the  company  of  male  escorts 
without  chaperonage,  or  as  members  of  philanthropic  and 
literary  clubs. 

There  are  two  political  parties  in  Cuba,  the  Conservative, 
now  in  power,  and  the  Liberal;  but  their  divisions  are  not 
caused  by  such  problems  as  are  paramount  in  the  United 
States.  They  consist  rather  in  the  following  of  individual 
leaders,  so  that  a  change  in  political  parties  hardly  affects 
the  fundamental  problems  of  the  country, — seemingly  going 
no  further  than  a  swapping  of  political  patronage  and  office 
from  one  set  of  leaders  and  followers  to  another — a  contest 
between  the  "Ins"  and  the  "Outs."  At  the  present  time 
(1916),  for  instance,  upon  the  eve  of  another  presidential 
election,  the  Liberals  are  opposing  the  re-election  of  President 
Menocal  because,  as  they  have  said  in  a  recent  statement,  such 
re-election  might  result  in  "future  evils  for  the  country,"  the 
inference  being  that  it  would  engender  such  dissatisfaction 
upon  the  part  of  the  "Outs"  as  would  lead  to  another  revolu- 
tion. They  make  no  attack  upon  the  policy  of  the  administra- 
tion, nor  do  they  criticize  its  attitude  toward  fundamental 
political  principles. 

Of  course  there  are  problems  confronting  Cuba.  First  is 
the  creation  of  an  economic  middle  class  among  the  Cubans 
themselves,  a  class  which  will  uncover  issues  and  force  their 
attention  and  solution  upon  the  country.  At  present  Cubans 
are  divided  into  the  very  rich  and  the  very  poor,  and  poverty 
is  both  a  problem  and  a  business,  necessarily  fostered  and 
encouraged  under  the  present  system.    There  is  no  middle 


136  THE   NEW   WORLD 

class,  the  only  element  approaching  it  being  the  foreigners, 
mostly  Spaniards,  who,  of  course,  have  no  political  influence. 
One  cause  of  this  lack  of  an  economic  middle  class  is  that 
nearly  all  the  land  is  held  in  large  tracts,  and  as  there  is 
no  tax  upon  unimproved  land  it  is  held  for  large  profits  and 
thus  kept  out  of  the  reach  of  any  but  the  wealthy.  Americans 
in  Havana,  for  instance,  find  it  cheaper  to  rent,  high  as  rents 
are,  than  to  build  and  own  their  own  homes.  A  reasonable 
tax  upon  the  land  which  would  force  its  division  into 
smaller  tracts  and  lots,  and  its  sale  at  prices  within  reach 
of  the  people,  would  have  a  very  beneficial  effect.  In  the 
first  place  it  would  distribute  the  wealth  of  the  country,  and 
in  the  second  it  would  result  in  the  creation  of  that  most 
valuable  of  national  assets — a  home-owning  middle  class. 
These  results  would  in  turn  obviate  the  necessity  for  the 
present  enormous  tariff  on  imports,  the  burden  of  which  must 
be  borne  by  those  who  can  least  afford  it,  as  will  be  seen 
when  it  is  remembered  that  Cuba  imports  everything  except 
raw  sugar,  tobacco  and  a  few  fruits.  The  cost  of  living  in 
Cuba  as  a  result  of  its  tariff  laws,  is  enormous. 

In  any  consideration  of  Cuba's  problems  it  should  be  borne 
in  mind  that  the  people  have  been  in  possession  of  their 
independence  for  only  about  fifteen  years.  They  had  much, 
very  much,  to  learn;  but  all  things  considered,  they  have 
fared  very  well.  Compare  their  experiences,  for  instance, 
with  our  own.  Compare  our  municipal  muddles  and  our  cor- 
rupt state  governments  with  their  mixups,  and  one  can  see 
that  time — and  patience — can  and  will  solve  Cuba's  problems. 
But  in  the  meantime  they  must  develop  one  thing,  which  we 
in  the  United  States  are  fortunate  enough  to  have  produced 
already,  a  public  conscience  that  condemns  the  evils  threat- 
ening the  nation's  peace  and  welfare  and  which  serves  as  an 
earnest  of  their  elimination. 

The  fundamental  need  of  Cuba,  therefore,  is  a  moral  and 
religious  one — the  creation  of  a  public  conscience  which  will 
encourage  and  give  support  to  patriotic  and  disinterested 
citizens,  and  prevent  that  characteristic  shrug  of  the  shoulders 
and  expression  of  the  lips  which,  implying  and  signifying 
"What's  the  use?"  has  an  influence  beyond  realization.  Until 
such  a  public  moral  opinion  is  generated  there  can  hardly 
be  even  an  attempt  at  any  real  solution  of  Cuba's  problems, 
moral,  political  or  economic.  Hence  the  justification  of  our 
mission,  not  only  for  our  own  and  English-speaking  people, 
but  for  natives  who  need  and  seek  what  we  have  to  con- 
tribute; for  there  is  no  indication  that  such  a  public  con- 
science will  be  created  and  sustained  without  such  aid.    Take, 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  137 

for  example,  the  National  Lottery,  perhaps  the  most  insidious 
evil  in  Cuban  life,  but  legalized  and  run  by  the  government 
and  accepted  as  a  matter  of  course  by  the  people.  This  is 
the  chief,  but  by  no  means  the  only  example  of  the  evils 
which  a  public  conscience  is  needed  to  eradicate. 

There  are  intelligent  and  patriotic  Cubans  who  see  this. 
Many  of  them  are  in  our  own  and  other  mission  churches; 
many  of  them  with  no  religious  affiliation  at  all,  and  a  few 
in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  Perhaps  the  greatest  service 
that  our  own  and  other  missions  can  render  Cuba,  and  the 
other  Latin  American  Republics  is  to  provide  a  moral  and 
religious  home  where  such  patriotic  men  may  find  inspiration 
and  encouragement  until  the  leaven  has  worked  sufficiently 
for  them  to  have  their  own  national  churches,  as  China  has 
to-day,  which  will  best  express  the  genius  of  their  people 
and  point  them  to  the  righteousness  that  exalteth  a  nation ; 
and  at  the  same  time  cement  that  mutual  understanding  and 
friendship  which  will  unite  the  Americas  in  a  common  service 
of  mankind,  based  upon  common  political  and  religious  ideals. 
This  is  becoming  more  and  more  imperative  and  necessary 
for  the  future  peace  and  welfare  of  this  continent  and  of  the 
world,  as  our  political  and  commercial  interests  draw  us 
daily  closer  together — for  good  or  for  ill. 


THE  church's  work  IN  CUBA 

Up  until  1876,  strict  laws  had  made  it  impossible 
for  any  except  the  faithful  of  the  Roman  Church  to 
hold  religious  services  in  Cuba.  In  that  year  a  decree 
of  religious  toleration  was  issued  by  the  home  govern- 
ment in  Madrid.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  though,  the  new 
law  was  not  heard  of  by  most  of  the  islanders  for 
almost  ten  years,  which  was  only  natural,  seeing  that 
they  remained  in  ignorance  of  many  other  things  which 
were  going  on  in  the  hurrying  world  beyond  their 
small  horizon. 

If  one  would  have  an  idea,  then,  of  the  conditions 
under  which  our  work  began  he  must  picture  to  him- 
self a  people  who  were  so  little  concerned  about  re- 
ligious liberty  that  they  did  not  know  whether  they 
were  free  or  not, — did  not  know,  and  never  made  any 


138  THE   NEW  WORLD 

effort  to  find  out.  This  does  not  apply  to  everybody  of 
course,  but  to  the  rank  and  file.  Such  was  Cuba.  A 
land  of  contented  discontent,  or  ignorant  ignorance, 
of  small  local  revolts  but  of  no  large  national  move- 
ments, of  medieval  sterility.  It  was  a  part  of  the  New 
World  that  needed  help  from  the  other  parts  which  had 
surged  forward  on  the  tide  of  progress. 

The  first  evidence  that  northern  New  Worlders 
wished  to  help  in  solving  Cuba's  problems  appeared  in 
1882,  when  under  the  auspices  of  the  American  Bible 
Society  and  the  Ladies  Bible  Society  of  Philadelphia, 
one  Seiior  Diaz  began  work  as  a  colporteur  in  Havana. 
Such  a  large  welcome  was  given  his  unexpected  mes- 
sage that  soon  another  colporteur — thanks  to  the  ef- 
forts of  a  loyal  churchman,  Mr.  John  Rhoads,  of  Phila- 
delphia,— a  Sefior  Pedro  Duarte  was  sent  to  Matanzas. 

Duarte  was  made  of  larger  caliber  than  Diaz;  the 
mere  distribution  of  Bibles  did  not  suffice  for  him. 
"On  my  arrival  at  Matanzas,"  he  wrote,  "besides  de- 
voting all  the  hours  of  the  day  to  the  distribution  of 
the  Bible,  I  felt  in  my  heart  the  need  of  uniting  with 
some  Christians,  of  repeating  with  them  the  prayers 
and  psalms  of  the  ritual  of  the  Church  whose  faith 
had  been  my  faith  for  many  years  already.     .     .     . 

"To  satisfy  that  need  which  I  felt,  and  to  better 
carry  on  the  propaganda  of  the  Gospel,  on  the  5th  of 
August,  1883,  I  held  the  first  evening  service,  taking 
as  a  text  for  meditation  that  night  Chapter  5  of  the 
Gospel  of  St.  Matthew.  A  large  number  of  persons 
attended  this  service ;  members  of  all  classes  of  society 
and  of  different  nationalities  might  have  been  seen 
there.  There  was  formed  and  continued  a  congrega- 
tion called  'Fieles  a  Jesus'"  (Faithful  to  Jesus). 

But  these  meetings  and  this  forming  of  a  congrega- 
tion not  under  the  patronage  of  the  long-established 
Church  in  Cuba  did  not  pass  unchallenged.  Before 
he  knew  it  Mr.  Duarte  found  himself  in  the  hands  of 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  139 

the  law  and  compelled  to  employ  counsel  to  tell  the 
islanders  about  the  new  law  of  toleration. 

At  this  point  let  us  pause  before  we  vent  our  spleen — 
let  us  pause  and  get  our  bearings,  lest  we  say  some- 
thing worthy  only  of  those  who  have  no  historical 
perspective.  And  there  is  no  better  way  in  which  to 
get  our  bearings  than  to  take  some  well-known  illustra- 
tion of  medievalism:  John  Calvin,  for  example.  He 
did  exactly  the  same  kind  of  things  as  did  the  Cuban 
authorities.  He  had  a  system  in  Geneva  which  con- 
trolled people  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave.  Never 
in  Cuba  were  laws  enforced  more  thoroughly  than  in 
protestant  Geneva.  Which  is  said  not  in  criticism  of 
Calvin,  but  because  it  illustrates  the  medieval  point 
of  view.  To  be  sure,  one  may  say  that  those  things 
which  were  done  in  Geneva  happened  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  whereas  Mr.  Duarte  lived  in  the  nineteenth. 
Very  true,  but  unless  we  realize  that  Cuba  was  afflicted 
with  arrested  development, — was  still  in  the  sixteenth 
century, — we  miss  the  whole  point. 

Let  us  not  be  splenetic,  therefore,  over  the  picture 
of  Mr.  Duarte  in  prison.  Let  us  rather  feel  as  we  feel 
toward  people  whose  development  has  been  arrested. 
Only  as  we  acquire  this  sympathetic  point  of  view 
can  we  approach  our  problem  with  any  hope  of  being 
useful. 

Shortly  after  Mr.  Duarte  had  been  released  by  the 
law,  he  made  up  his  mind  to  study  for  Holy  Orders, 
and  went  to  Philadelphia.  There,  under  Edward  W. 
Syle,  one  of  the  clergy,  by  the  way,  who  had  been 
compelled  to  leave  China  when  the  American  Civil 
War  had  all  but  put  a  stop  to  that  work, — there,  under 
Mr.  Syle,  Duarte  prepared  himself  for  ministering  to 
the  people  in  Cuba.^ 

.  *  A  ^^J^  interesting  account  of  Mr.  Duarte's  experiences  will  be  found 
Jtl  S  peptember.  October,  November  and  December.  1893,  issues  of 
J  he  hclio,  the  organ  of  the  American  Church  Missionary  Society. 


140  THE   NEW  WORLD 

During  the  two  years  that  Mr.  Duarte  was  in 
Philadelphia,  Bishop  Young,  of  Florida,  who  had  be- 
come interested  in  the  work,  made  two  visits  to  Cuba 
and  wrote  feelingly  of  the  "need  for  the  Bread  of 
Life"  in  that  land.  Not  content  with  writing,  a  little 
later  he  made  a  special  voyage  to  New  York  with 
the  intention  of  asking  the  Board  of  Missions  to  take 
charge  of  the  work.  He  failed,  however,  in  the  en- 
deavor. Exactly  why,  does  not  appear  in  the  records, 
but  from  the  general  context  one  is  led  to  believe  that 
it  was  a  matter  of  dollars  and  cents, — just,  for  ex- 
ample, as  to-day  the  Board  has  had  to  decline  to  ap- 
propriate for  new  work  in  every  missionary  jurisdic- 
tion in  the  world.  It  is  the  same  old  story  of  never 
being  able  to  start  new  work  until  the  most  opportune 
moments  have  passed.  The  Board  of  Missions  is 
continually  in  the  position  of  a  man  who  has  reached 
the  station  just  after  the  train  has  pulled  out  and  has 
had  to  commence  that  hundred  mile  journey  on  shanks* 
mare. 

In  1885,  Mr.  Duarte  was  ordained  a  deacon  by 
Bishop  Stevens,  of  Pennsylvania,  and  was  ready  to 
go  back  to  Matanzas,  but — the  old  problem — how  was 
he  to  be  supported?  In  the  presence  of  this  perplexity, 
'The  Ladies'  Cuban  Guild,"  of  Philadelphia,  came  into 
existence,  and  volunteered  to  shoulder  the  burden. 
Bishop  Stevens,  however,  thinking  that  it  would  be  too 
heavy  a  load  for  a  small  guild,  asked  the  American 
Church  Missionary  Society  ^  to  bear  a  hand  also.  But 
that  Society  found  that  it  could  not,  and  the  Ladies* 
Guild  bore  the  entire  expense  of  Mr.  Duarte*s  work 
until  1888.  At  that  time,  Bishop  Whitaker,  Bishop 
Stevens'  successor,  backed  up  by  a  resolution  of  the 
Board  of  Missions,  asked  the  American  Church  Mis- 
sionary Society  to  take  charge.    This  it  agreed  to  do, 

*  See  Appendix  III  for  a  statement  of  the  American  Church  Mis- 
sionary Society. 


JAMAICAN    CHILDREN    IN    A    CHURCH    SCHOOL    AT 
GUANTANAMO 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  141 

since  the  gradually  awakening  conscience  of  its  con- 
stituents had  considerably  increased  the  possibilities 
of  its  exchequer. 

During  Mr.  Duarte's  absence,  the  work  had  been 
carried  on  by  the  Rev.  J.  B.  Baez,  who  had  been 
brought  into  it  under  amusing  circumstances.  It 
seemed  that  previous  to  Duarte's  departure  a  certain 
American  citizen  named  Santamarina  had  desired  to 
marry  a  Cuban  lady  whose  certificate  of  baptism  did 
not  appear  on  the  record  of  the  parish  church  in  Ma- 
tanzas,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  she  had  been 
baptized  there.  On  account  of  that  omission,  Mr. 
Santamarina  had  been  told  that  he  w^ould  have  to 
pay  $300  for  the  services  of  the  Church.  Unwilling 
to  put  up  with  this  extortion  he  had  turned  to  Mr. 
Duarte,  who  had  replied  that  if  he  would  pay  the 
expenses,  he  (Duarte)  would  import  a  clergj^man 
from  the  United  States.  Santamarina  agreed,  like  a 
good  Yankee.  Accordingly,  Mr.  Baez  had  been  im- 
ported from  Key  West  and  the  marriage,  together  with 
four  others,  had  been  performed  in  the  American 
Consul's  office.  At  the  conclusion  of  this  ceremony 
the  party  had  adjourned  to  the  building  occupied  by 
the  Fieles  a  Jesus  congregation  and  received  the 
Eucharist. 

Mr.  Baez  remained  for  two  years  in  Cuba,  and  pre- 
sented a  large  number  of  persons  in  several  different 
congregations, — *'in  Havana,  in  Santiago  de  los  Begas, 
and  in  Bejucal," — to  Bishop  Young  for  confirmation. 
So  great  was  his  success  in  Matanzas  that  a  second 
congregation  was  established  and  named  after  St. 
Peter  the  Apostle.  Several  candidates  for  Holy  Orders 
came  forward  and  not  a  few  lay  readers  were  ap- 
pointed.^ 

*At  this  time  there  was  quite  a  discussion  as  to  the  canonical  right 
of  our  branch  of  the  Church  Catholic  to  enter  the  Latin  field.  In 
response  to  letters  written  in  1893  by  the  editor  of  The  Echo  twenty- 
six    bishops    replied    approving.      Their    names    will    be    found    in    the 


142  THE   NEW   WORLD 

Like  so  many  things,  though,  that  start  with  a  rush, 
the  flourishing  work  in  Cuba  was  not  founded  on  solid 
rock.  Personal  disagreements  arose  which  resulted  in 
a  good  many  desertions,  among  which  was  that  of  one 
of  our  best  workers.  It  sounds  familiar  to  learn  that 
this  man  on  going  over  to  one  of  the  denominations 
found  that  he  had  stepped  from  comparative  poverty 
into  affluence.  He  had  been  struggling  along  with 
barely  enough  to  make  ends  meet.  His  new  friends 
granted  him  everything  he  asked  for.  More  than  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars  was  provided  with  which 
to  build  a  church  and  forward  its  interests.  So  suc- 
cessful was  he  in  a  material  way  in  fact,  that,  like 
people  in  many  places  the  Havanese  assumed  that 
material  prosperity  indicated  spiritual  strength  and 
flocked  after  him  in  great  numbers. 

One  of  our  first  workers  once  said  that  the  story 
of  the  Cuban  mission  is  one  of  beginnings  and  end- 
ings. In  many  places  things  would  start  with  a  boom 
and  then  break  up  with  another  boom.  One  of  Mr. 
Duarte's  letters,  after  he  had  been  absent  from  Cuba 
on  sick  leave,  illustrates  this : 

"The  Episcopal  Church,"  he  writes,  ''has  disappeared 
in  Havana;  all  the  converts  she  has  made  went  to 
make  up  the  component  parts  of  the  Baptist  Church, 
and  in  Matanzas  nothing  was  left.  The  furniture  of 
the  Chapel  Fieles  a  Jesus  was  stored  in  the  different 
houses  of  its  members."  In  this  extremity,  the  veteran 
was  called  upon  by  Mr.  Rhoads  to  make  another  trip 
to  Cuba  and  send  in  a  report.     This  resulted  in  his 

September  and  November  numbers  of  The  Echo.  Perhaps  the  most 
striking  statement  of  any  of  them  was  that  from  the  Assistant  Bishop 
of  Alabama,  Dr.  Jackson,  who,  under  date  of  September  23,  1893, 
writes  in  reply  to  the  (question  whether  we  have  a  right  to  establish 
missions  in  Latin  countries,  "Rome  has  established  no  national  church 
in  these  countries,  has,  in  fact,  established  nothing  but  missions;  and 
missions  of  divers  branches  of  the  Church  may  exist  co-ordinately  in 
the  same  territory.  Thus  the  English  and  the  American  Churches  both 
have  missions  in  China  and  Japan,  and  there  is  no  schism."  See  also 
pages  3  to  7  of  The  Echo  for  February,   1894. 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  143 

settling  down  in  Matanzas  and  re-establishing  the 
work  so  thoroughly  that  it  has  continued  there  ever 
since. 

The  subsequent  history  of  the  Cuban  mission  ^  is 
both  encouraging  and  discouraging.  Ups  and  downs 
continued  with  the  ups  only  gradually  getting  the 
balance  of  power.  As  late  as  1899,  for  example,  despite 
the  fact  that  the  American  Church  Missionary  So- 
ciety had  been  doing  its  best,  we  find  that  there  were 
only  three  workers  on  the  ground,  of  whom  Mr.  Duarte 
was  one.  Clearly  something  radical  had  to  be  done. 
There  was  no  use  trifling  any  longer.  The  work 
needed  a  bishop  and  a  regular  ecclesiastical  organiza- 
tion. 

Bishop  Young  had  pled  for  a  bishop  in  Cuba  back 
in  the  eighties,  but  the  Board  had  been  unable  to  see 
its  way  clear  to  ask  for  one.^  Much  later,  as  a  tempo- 
rary relief,  the  Presiding  Bishop  had  asked  the  Bishop 
of  Porto  Rico  to  take  charge  (in  1902),  but  transit 
from  San  Juan  to  Havana  is  less  simple  than  from 
New  York,  so  that  expedient  did  not  work.  At  last, 
in  1904,  matters  came  to  a  head,  and  at  the  General 
Convention  which  met  in  Boston,  the  Rev.  Albion  W. 
Knight  was  elected  Bishop  of  Cuba.  With  this  act 
began  a  new  phase  in  the  life  of  the  mission,  a  phase 
during  which  the  growth  was  sure  and  steady.     The 

*  See,  for  further  details,  the  history  of  work  by  Bishop  Knight. 

'  The  first  official  statement  that  we  have  with  regard  to  the  Board 
of  Missions  becoming  interested  in  the  Cuban  work  will  be  found  in 
the  issue  of  the  Spirit  of  Missions  for  July,  1884,  where  we  read,  "The 
Board  has  entered  temporarily  upon  the  work  in  Cuba,"  and  further 
that  at  its  May  meeting  it  adopted  the  following  resolution:  "Whereas 
the  Bishop  of  Florida  has  looked  to  the  Foreign  Committee  for  an 
appropriation,  etc.,  etc.,  Resolved,  that  the  Foreign  Committee  recom- 
mend to  the  Board  of  Managers  to  consider  whether  an  appropriation 
to  such  work  ...  in  the  single  sum  of  One  Thousand  Dollars  shall 
be  made;  it  being  distinctly  understood  that  nothing  whatever  is  prom- 
ised beyond  September  1,  1884."  On  the  10th  of  June  the  Board  of 
Managers  acted  favorably  upon  this  resolution.  A  full  account  of  the 
Bishop  of  Florida's  visits  will  be  found  in  Vol.  XLIX  of  the  Spirit  of 
Missions,  p.   484   ff. 


144  THE  NEW  WORLD 

principles  which  guided  the  new  bishop  can  best  be 
set  forth  in  his  own  words : 

On  account  of  its  proximity  to  the  United  States  [Bishop 
Knight  writes]  and  the  close  political  affiliation  which  came 
as  a  result  of  the  Spanish-American  war,  immigration  to 
Cuba  from  the  United  States  has  been  natural  and  inevitable. 
The  people  immigrating  have  been  engaged  largely  in  de- 
veloping the  resources  of  the  island.  They  are  as  a  rule 
ignorant  of  and  not  connected  with  the  form  of  religion 
that  has  existed  in  the  Cuba  of  the  past.  Along  with  these 
immigrants  it  was  and  is  but  natural  that  the  Episcopal 
Church  should  go,  and  its  first  work  is  the  care  of  those 
thus  settled  on  the  Island  of  Cuba,  permanently  or  tem- 
porarily. 

In  considering  this  phase  of  the  work  we  must  take  into 
consideration  the  fact  that  outside  the  city  of  Havana,  the 
greater  portion  of  North  Americans  are  settled  either  in  the 
mining  or  rural  districts.  In  the  mining  districts  in  the  moun- 
tain province  of  Santiago,  there  is  a  very  large  number  of 
Americans  engaged  in  the  development  of  the  enormous 
deposits  of  iron.  These  are  largely  men  of  collegiate  edu- 
cation, mining  engineers,  chemists,  and  men  of  that  type. 
They  are  separated  from  the  ties  and  associations  which  were 
formed  in  their  younger  days  and  the  environment  is  such 
as  to  tempt  them  to  yield  to  practices  which  drag  one  down. 
The  presence  of  a  clergyman  of  the  church,  even  though  his 
visits  be  infrequent,  has  an  effect  far  beyond  what  one 
would  imagine. 

Then,  too,  there  are  many  North  Americans  on  the  large 
sugar  estates.  Cuba  supplies  more  than  half  the  sugar  con- 
sumed in  the  United  States,  and  gradually  the  plantations 
have  been  getting  into  the  hands  of  our  people.  On  these 
sugar  estates  a  certain  amount  of  skilled  Yankee  labor  is 
employed.  Frequently  with  the  men  go  their  families,  and 
this  group  of  immigrants  is,  like  that  above  noted,  quite 
separated  from  the  world  of  their  birth.  They  are  absorbed 
for  many  months  of  the  year  with  the  great  mills  that  grind 
twenty-four  hours  a  day  and  seven  days  of  the  week.  They 
need  at  least  the  occasional  presence  of  a  clergyman  of  the 
church.  Would  that  we  could  have  one  with  them  all  the 
time ! 

The  third  class  of  North  Americans  are  those  who  have 
settled  in  colonies  in  certain  districts  of  Cuba  or  on  the  Isle 
of  Pines.  They  have  bought  land  and  undertaken  its  develop- 
ment, more  particularly  along  the  line  of  citrus   fruits.    In 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  145 

these  colonies  the  family  life— found  only  infrequently  in  the 
mining  and  sugar  districts— presents  a  new  problem.  Here 
we  find  men  who  have  left  their  homes  with  their  wives  and 
children  and  come  into  this  new  land  in  the  hope  that  they 
will  be  able  to  better  themselves  materially.  They  find  them- 
selves surrounded  on  all  sides  by  conceptions  of  morals  and 
religions  quite  strange  to  them.  The  church  must  follow 
such  and  see  to  it  that  they  are  not  lost  in  or  absorbed  by 
their  surroundings.  To  do  this  we  must  have  church  build- 
ings and  regular  services  and  schools.  I  would  emphasize 
schools  because  in  the  public  school  system  everything  is 
taught  in  Spanish,  with  Cuban  teachers,  with  the  natural  re- 
sult that  the  children  who  attend  them  acquire  the  Spanish 
mode  of  thought,  and  even  think  in  Spanish. 

It  might  be  asked  why  don't  these  North  Americans  main- 
tain their  own  schools,  and  the  reply  is  that  it  takes  an 
organization  like  the  church  to  conduct  schools  of  the  best 
type.  Having  spent  all  of  their  money  on  their  new  homes 
and  plantations,  the  settlers  are  quite  unable  to  undertake 
educational  work  of  a  kind  that  is  worth  while.  And  then, 
too,  they  are  not  in  a  position  to  know  how  to  do  the  thing 
properly. 

By  way  of  illustrating  the  work  that  we  are  doing  for 
these  settlers  or  immigrants  we  might  say  that  in  Havana 
there  is  the  Cathedral  in  which  the  main  services  are  in 
English;  in  La  Gloria,  where  there  is  an  American  colony 
of  several  hundred  families,  we  have  a  new  church  building, 
a  rectory,  and  resident  clergyman,  and  a  school;  at  Bartle 
services  have  been  conducted  from  time  to  time  by  the  clergy- 
man at  La  Gloria;  on  the  Isle  of  Pines  we  have  five  mission 
stations  cared  for  by  one  clergyman  who  whisks  about  from 
one  to  the  other  in  automobiles  each  Sunday,  and  thereby 
keeps  them  all  going.i  In  addition  to  these  we  conduct  ser- 
vices at  Guantanamo  City,  at  Guantanamo  Naval  Station,  at 
the  mining  stations  of  Fermeza,  and  Felton,  at  Paso  Estancia 
and  the  sugar  estates  of  Constancia,  Preston,  Chaparra  and 
Ensenada  de  Mora. 

In  addition  to  the  North  American  immigrant  element,  in 
which  has  been  included  Canadians  and  Englishmen,  of  whom 
there  are  quite  a  number  in  Cuba,  there  is,  as  we  have  already 
seen  in  the  case  of  Porto  Rico,  a  large  number  of  negroes 
from  the  British  West  Indies.  Whereas  Porto  Rico  is  over- 
populated,  Cuba  is  underpopulated,  and  these  West  Indians 
are  welcomed  gladly  wherever  operatives  are  needed.    Many 

*  For  an  interesting  description  of  this  work  see  the  Spirit  of  Missions, 
March,    1915,  pp.    183-186. 


146  THE  NEW  WORLD 

of  them  have  been  brought  up  in  the  Church  of  England. 
They  are  essentially  a  religious  and  loyal  lot,  and  it  is  in- 
cumbent upon  us  to  minister  to  them.  For*  them  we  conduct 
services  at  Guantanamo,  where  we  have  a  district  priest 
and  a  beautiful  church;  in  Santiago;  in  Ensenada  de  Mora, 
where  again  we  have  a  fine  church  and  a  resident  priest;  at 
Preston,  and  at  Felton,  and  lastly,  in  Havana,  services  are 
regularly  held  for  the  large  element  of  English-speaking 
blacks.     In  Guantanamo  we  have  a  school  for  them. 

The  third  element  [writes  Bishop  Knight]  with  which  the 
church  has  to  deal,  is  the  native  population  of  the  island. 
In  conducting  work  am.ong  them  no  attempt  is  made  to 
proselyte.  One  often  hears  the  question  asked,  Why  is  it 
necessary  to  send  missionaries  to  a  country  like  Cuba,  which 
has  been  under  the  care  of  an  ancient  church  for  four 
hundred  years?  There  are  two  answers  to  this:  the  first 
is  found  in  the  fact  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  popula- 
tion have_  for  various  reasons  rendered  themselves  shepherd- 
less.  It  is  practically  impossible  for  the  old  church  with 
which  they  have  been  dealing  in  the  past  to  revive  their 
interest  in  spiritual  and  religious  things.  Another  church 
going  in  and  presenting  Christianity  from  a  different  point 
of  view,  is  able  to  excite  their  interest  and  frequently  bring 
them  back  into  the  fold  of  Christ.  The  second  reason  is  to 
be  found  in  the  fact  that  there  has  been  a  real  lack  of 
interest  and  religious  fervor  in  the  priests  and  the  people. 
It  is  but  a  natural  result  of  the  circumstances  which  have 
obtained.  The  priests  have  not  been  dependent  upon  the 
people  for  their  living,  and  the  people,  not  having  to  support 
them,  have  lost  interest.     It  is  the  old  story  of  Arauna. 

Another  Church  going  in,  aids  in  creating  once  again  the 
religious  atmosphere,  and  with  it  goes  a  revival  of  hitherto 
dead  loyalty  to  the  old  Church,  The  work  therefore  of  the 
Episcopal  Church  among  these  people  is  to  gather  together, 
as  far  as  possible,  those  who  may  come  to  it  through  the 
excitement  of  a  renewal  of  their  interest  in  religious  matters, 
and  also  to  create  such  an  atmosphere  as  will  help  the  old 
Church  to  do  its  work  more  efficiently  and  faithfully.  What 
the  Church  has  accomplished  among  these  people  has  come 
as  a  result  of  the  work  that  was  undertaken  for  the  immi- 
grants about  whom  we  have  already  spoken.  The  natives, 
having  witnessed  the  form  of  service  and  the  character  and 
nature  of  the  Church's  policy,  have  of  themselves  in  many 
places  called  for  our  Church's  ministrations.  In  response  to 
such  calls  we  have  developed  a  work  which  in  a  measure 
covers  the  whole  Island  of  Cuba. 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  147 

During^  Bishop  Knig^ht's  ten  years,  following  these 
lines  of  development,  the  work  grew  from  six  to  thirty- 
seven  congregations,  and  the  communicant  list  from 
200  to  more  than  1,700,  and  the  children  in  the  Sunday 
schools  from  75  to  over  1,300;  in  the  parochial  schools 
the  pupils  increased  in  number  from  75  to  more  than 
800,  and  the  clergy  list  from  2  to  24.^ 

When  we  remember  that  the  opportunities  and  open- 
ings were  far  larger  when  Mr.  Duarte  first  shouldered 
the  burden  in  Matanzas,  we  cannot  help  wondering  how 
much  greater  would  the  results  have  been  today  if  the 
Church  had  appointed  a  bishop  twenty  years  earlier. 
This  business  of  trying  to  run  a  mission  without  a 
head,  is  a  good  deal  like  trying  to  direct  soldiers 
who  have  no  officer  with  them. 

One  interesting  point  brought  out  by  Bishop  Knight 
at  the  time  of  his  resignation  is,  that  when  one  analyzes 
the  work  he  sees  "that  there  are  two  distinctive  kinds 

^  The  following  is  a   complete  list  of  our  work  in  Cuba: 

Among  White  Foreigners  Among  English-Speaking  Blacks 


Cathedral  in 

Havana 

Vedado 

Isle  of  Pines 

(flV( 

£  Stations) 

Camaguey 

Sagua   la   Grande 

Ceballos 

Constancia   (near 

Cienfuegos) 

Santiago 

Ceballos 

Ensenada  de  Mora 

La  Gloria 

Guantanamo 

Paso  Estancia 

Preston 

Felton 

Felton 

Bartle 

Camaguey 

Among  Spanish-Speaking  Blacks 

Among  Cubans 

Limonar 

Jesus   del    Monte    (Havana) 
Bacuranao 

Coliseo 

Jovellanos 

Matanzas 

Santiago 

Bolondron 

Union 

Cardenas 

Sagua  la  Grande 

Macagua 

Cienfuegos 

Constancia 

Cespcdes 

Nuevitas 

Camaguey 

Chaparra 

Santa  Cruz  del  Norte 

148  THE   NEW   WORLD 

of  work  being  done ;  that  among  the  English-speaking 
people  whether  white  or  black,  and  that  among  na- 
tive people  whether  white  or  black.  The  compara- 
tive progress  among  these  two  groups  is  very  signifi- 
cant. There  is  almost  exactly  the  same  number  of 
communicants  among  the  English-speaking  people  as 
there  is  among  the  Spanish-speaking  people,  and  the 
number  of  clergy  is  almost  equally  divided.  On  the 
other  hand,  when  one  considers  the  growth  as  indicated 
by  baptisms  and  confirmations,  he  finds  that  that 
among  the  natives  far  exceeds  that  among  the  foreign 
element.  This  is  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  the 
vast  majority  of  those  who  immigrate  to  Cuba  are  of 
mature  years  and  have,  as  a  rule,  been  baptized  or  con- 
firmed before  leaving  their  home.  Should  this  ratio 
of  progress  keep  up,  the  native  Church  will  soon  pre- 
ponderate very  largely  in  numbers.  This  means  that 
for  a  long  time  the  native  Church  will  look  to  the 
United  States  for  financial  aid  and  assistance." 

The  Cubans  who  are  thus  being  reached  belong  to 
what  is  called  the  "working  classes."  As  in  all  other 
parts  of  Latin  America,  it  is  very  difficult  to  reach 
the  so-called  ^'cultured"  people,  and  thereby  hangs  a 
tale — a  tale  concerning  the  irrespressible  conflict  be- 
tween the  ideals  of  the  old  and  new  orders.  Sad  to 
say,  this  conflict  and  its  result  are  almost  inevitable. 
We  have  seen  it  vividly  illustrated  in  Japan  and  in 
many  other  parts  of  the  world.  We  shall  see  it  illus- 
trated again  in  Brazil.  It  amounts  to  this.  Just  as 
among  our  own  people  seventy-five  years  ago,  when  the 
discoveries  of  science  began  to  come  thick  and  fast, 
there  followed  a  bewildering  amount  of  agnosticism 
and  materialism ;  so  among  these  people  under  similar 
conditions,  loss  of  faith  has  followed.  May  we  not 
say  though,  that  as  the  Church  has  gradually  adapted 
itself  to  the  new  situation,  and  met  with  success  the 
new  problems,  and  driven  back  the  tidal  wave  of  un- 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  149 

belief,  even  so  we  may  be  confident  that  in  Cuba, 
before  very  long,  agnosticism  will  be  dispelled  before 
the  advance  of  an  awakened  Church. 

We  now  come  to  the  last  phase  of  our  work.  At  a 
special  meeting  of  the  House  of  Bishops,  in  October, 
1914,  the  Rerv.  H.  R.  Hulse  was  elected  to  succeed 
Bishop  Knight,  who  had  resigned  to  become  Vice 
Chancellor  of  Sewanee.  Bishop  Hulse  was  conse- 
crated in  the  Cathedral  of  St.  John  the  Divine  on  the 
12th  of  January,  1915,  and  went  shortly  thereafter 
to  his  diocese.  As  a  man  who  has  for  many  years 
been  interested  in  the  Latin  American  problem,  who 
was  at  one  time  General  Secretary  of  the  American 
Church  Missionary  Society, — his  acquaintance  with 
the  subject  is  wide  and  deep,  and  the  Church  can  feel 
very  sure  that  under  him  we  shall  make  a  worthy 
contribution  to  the  progress  of  the  people  of  that 
wonderful  New  World  island. 


ISO  THE   NEW  WORLD 


HAITI 


The  history  of  Haiti  makes  terrible  reading.  Mas- 
sacres and  slave  drivings,  revolutions  and  executions 
follow  one  upon  the  other  in  such  quick  succession  that 
the  heart  sickens.  Just  outside  Port  au  Prince  the 
plain  of  Cul-de-Sac  bears  bitter  testimony  to  these 
things.  There  it  lies,  the  center  of  the  most  fertile 
district  in  the  world,  a  district  which  yielded  a  vast 
amount  of  produce  in  the  days  when  the  Frenchmen 
ruled,  a  district  which  was  once  dotted  with  the  splen- 
did residences  of  wealthy  planters,  a  district  which  to- 
day could  support  a  fabulous  number  of  people, — there 
it  lies  desolate,  with  naught  but  a  few  ruins  to  remind 
one  of  its  pristine  glory.  Where  might  be  wealth  and 
plenty  today,  where  wealth  and  plenty  did  abound 
in  efficient  yesterdays,  a  few,  poor,  sordid  folk  eke 
out  a  slim  existence.  The  Cul-de-Sac  is  eloquently 
symbolical  of  Haiti  as  a  whole.  "I  have  traveled," 
wrote  the  British  resident  St.  John,  "in  almost  every 
quarter  of  the  globe,  and  I  may  say  that,  taken  as  a 
whole,  there  is  not  a  finer  island.  No  country  pos- 
sesses greater  capabilities,  or  a  better  geographical 
position,  or  more  variety  of  soil,  of  climate,  and  of 
production ;  with  magnificent  scenery  of  every  descrip- 
tion, and  hillsides  where  the  pleasantest  of  health- 
resorts  might  be  established."  ^ 

The  Black  Republic  occupies  the  western  third  of  the 
island  which  Columbus  named  Little  Spain,  Espaiiola — 
which  name  was  changed  later  to  the  latin  Hispaniola. 
For  a  few  feverish  years,  as  we  learned  in  an  earlier 
chapter,  the  Conquistadores  had  worked  its  gold  mines 
with  enslaved  Arawak  Indians,  but  the  poor  docile 

»St.  John,  Hayti,  p.  18. 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  151 

creatures,  unused  to  labor,  had  succumbed  so  rapidly 
that  by  the  year  1507,  a  population  estimated  any- 
where between  eight  hundred  thousand  and  a  million 
and  a  half  (probably  the  lowest  figure  was  nearer 
the  truth)  had  been  reduced  to  sixty  thousand.  In 
this  extremity  there  was  nothing  to  do  but  import 
negroes, — that  is  to  say,  if  the  wealth-getting  activi- 
ties were  to  be  continued.  Yes,  if  wealth  were  to  be 
won,  slaves  must  be  brought  from  Africa.  Accord- 
ingly a  royal  ordinance  was  given  on  September  3, 
1500,  permitting  this  importation,  and  the  dread  work 
began. 

Can  we  of  this  tumultuous  part  of  the  New  World 
throw  a  stone  at  the  Spaniards  for  perpetrating  that 
act?  Further,  and  this  is  more  to  the  point,  are  not 
nine-tenths  of  all  our  present  social  troubles  the  direct 
result  of  the  same  spirit  as  that  which  dominated  the 
Spaniards?  The  cause,  for  example,  of  the  Spaniards' 
getting  slaves,  was  not  that  they  could  not  work  the 
mines  without  them,  but  that  they  could  not  do  it  in 
a  hurry.  In  the  same  way,  the  cause  of  most  of  our 
labor  troubles,  of  much  of  the  suffering  and  injustice, 
whether  of  the  poor  man  or  rich  man,  is  that  people 
are  in  a  hurry  to  make  a  go  of  this  or  that  scheme,  to 
develop  this  or  that  state  or  territory,  to  build  this  or 
that  road.  Everyone  wants  to  "get  rich  quick,"  and  it  is 
the  spirit  which  that  hurry  creates  that  makes  most 
of  the  trouble. 

So  the  Spaniards  in  a  hurry  to  develop  Haiti  brought 
over  Africans,  and  with  them  made  the  island  the 
richest  of  the  Indies,  the  pride  of  the  ambitious  colonist. 

But  the  Dons  were  not  destined  to  hold  Hispaniola 
as  they  did  Cuba  and  Porto  Rico  and  the  rest  of  the 
Antilles.  Certain  French  buccaneers,  driven  from  St. 
Kitts,  about  the  year  1630,  obtained  a  foothold  on 
Tortuga,  a  lazy  little  island  just  north  of  Cap 
Haytien.     From  that  point  they  made  successful  in- 


152  THE  NEW  WORLD 

cursions  upon  Haiti  and  eventually  moved  over,  bag 
and  baggage,  and  claimed  ownership — by  right  of  con- 
quest. The  French  government,  after  the  manner  of 
governments  generally,  seeing  a  chance  for  gain  in 
recognizing  these  lawless  buccaneers,  did  so  in  1640, 
and  lo !  they  became  lawful  colonists.  There  followed 
a  period  in  which  so  many  of  their  compatriots  j'oined 
them,  that,  though  Spain  w^as  loth  to  give  up  her  right- 
eous claims,  at  the  treaty  of  Ryswick  in  1697  she  finally 
admitted  the  inevitable  and  ceded  the  western  third  of 
the  island  to  Louis  XIV.  It  was  not  until  1770  that  an 
actual  boundary  line  between  the  French  and  Spanish 
colonies  was  run  off,  and  even  then  it  was  done  in  a 
very  haphazard  way. 

Haiti's  golden  days  were  in  the  period  between  the 
Treaty  of  Ryswick  and  the  opening  of  the  French 
Revolution,  i.e.,  between  1697  and  1789.  Cap  Haytien 
during  this  time  became  so  splendid  a  place  that  men 
called  it  the  Paris  of  America,  and  the  rest  of  the 
island  flourished  correspondingly.  Thirty  thousand 
whites  ruled  multitudes  of  blacks,  and  slavery,  of  a 
kind  never  exceeded  in  brutality,  prevailed. 

The  Revolution  of  1789  turned  things  upside  down 
quite  as  much  in  Haiti  as  in  France.  The  blacks,  sud- 
denly freed  by  the  edicts  of  the  perfervid,  if  perfidious, 
orators  of  the  Constituent  Assembly  in  Paris,  became 
like  children  with  a  new  and  deadly  toy.  To  make 
matters  worse  they  were  aided  and  abetted  in  the 
crimes  which  they  committed  in  the  name  of  their  new 
found  liberty,  by  mulattos  who  had  been  educated  in 
France  by  their  white  fathers,  and  hence  had  become 
experts  in  all  the  devilment  of  unworthy  whites.  Un- 
doubtedly the  bloody  years  of  the  early  nineteenth  cen- 
tury were  due,  like  the  bloody  days  in  our  own  recon- 
struction period,  not  to  the  blacks  themselves,  but  to 
those  sorrowful  and  anomalous,  and  much  to  be  pitied 
products  of  the  white  man's  sin, — those  men  without 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  153 

race.  With  such  leaders,  and  with  the  memories  of 
cruel  treatment  which  were  theirs,  should  we  marvel 
that  bloody  deeds  were  done? 

In  his  polemic  for  Haiti,  a  Methodist  divine,  the 
Rev.  M.  B.  Bird/  tells  how  that  in  the  years  1802 
and  1803  twenty  military  expeditions  with  51,509 
soldiers,  had  been  sent  from  France  to  fight  the 
Haitian  insurgents,  who,  drunk  with  a  too  quickly 
given  liberty,  had  turned  upon  their  former  white 
owners  with  murderous  intent.  Following  the  action 
of  the  French  revolutionary  assembly  bestowing  **lib- 
erty,  equality  and  fraternity,"  on  all  the  world,  the 
poor  blacks,  misunderstanding  the  very  meaning  of 
liberty,  had  begun  a  West  Indian  reign  of  terror. 
Within  a  space  of  nine  months,  under  the  leadership 
of  the  terrible  Dessalines  and  Christophe,  they  had 
burned,  ravished  and  slaughtered  the  whites  with  in- 
genuity and  persistence.  In  mad  retaliation,  the  French 
had  perpetrated  like  inhumanities,  and  the  island  had 
been  soaked  with  blood. 

The  end  of  all  this  miserable  business  came  in  1805, 
when,  having  lost  sixty  thousand  men  and  spent  ''two 
hundred  million  francs,"  and  gained  nothing  perma- 
nent, the  French  withdrew.  Since  that  time,  Haiti  has 
been  independent,^  but  her  independence  has  been  one 
of  demolition  and  destruction  rather  than  of  regenera- 
tion and  construction.  Those  who  have  been  at  the 
head  of  affairs,  whether  as  emperors  or  presidents,  have 

*  The  Black  Man,  or  Haytian  Independence,  by  M.  B.  Bird,  published 
by  the  author,  New  York,  1869,  Mr.  Bird  was  a  missionary  in  Haiti 
for  thirty  years  and  became,  toward  the  close  of  his  career,  a  regular 
"institution"  in  the  land. 

'  The  wars  developed  but  one  Haitian  whose  name  is  worthy  of  a 
place  on  the  pages  of  History,  Toussaint  L'Ouverture.  Of  him  Sir 
Spenser  St.  John  says,  "The  conduct  of  this  black  man  was  so  remark- 
able as  almost  to  confound  those  who  declare  the  negro  an  inferior 
creature  incapable  of  rising  to  genius."  (Hayii,  p.  45.)  A  pure  negro, 
this  really  upright,  honest  and  trustworthy  man  proved  himself  a  great 
leader  and  an  unselfish  patriot.  It  is  a  melancholy  commentary  that 
while  the  Haitians  have  forgotten  all  about  Toussaint  they  cherish  the 
memory  of  Dessalines.  See  on  this  point  Pritchard,  Where  Black  Rules 
White,  pp.   279,  280. 


154  THE  NEW  WORLD 

almost  without  exception,  been  self-seekers  and  cor- 
ruptionists.  By  bloodshed  they  have  acquired  their 
positions,  and  by  bloodshed  they  have  been  driven  out. 
Between  the  years  1804  and  1914,  Haiti  passed  through 
more  than  a  score  of  major  convulsions,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  many  minor  ones.  Now  under  ''emperors," 
now  under  "kings,"  now  under  "presidents," — one  has 
to  use  quotation  marks  since  only  in  name  did  the 
leaders  resemble  real  emperors  and  kings  and  presi- 
dents— the  land  groaned.  To  succeed  to  the  head- 
ship generally  meant  to  displace  one's  predecessor  with 
violence — though  some  wily  ones  decamped  before 
their  too  powerful  rivals  arrived.  Notably  we  should 
record  the  accomplishment  of  Simon  Sam,  president 
from  1896  to  1901,  who  having  filled  the  treasury  by 
means  of  an  issue  of  bonds,  proceeded  at  once  to  loot 
it.  He  made  a  "getaway"  by  night — literally — and 
has  been  enjoying  his  winnings  in  another  land.^ 

Such,  in  a  hurried  way,  is  the  history  of  that  land 
where  the  black  man  rules.  It  should  be  noted  in 
passing,  that  things  like  these  have  not  been  allowed 
to  go  on  in  any  other  quarter  of  the  world,  and  for  a 
significant  reason.  Elsewhere  some  European  power 
would  have  stepped  in.  In  this  instance  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  has  stood  in  the  way, — and  a  better  illus- 
tration of  the  advantageous  disadvantages  of  that 
dogma  could  not  be  found.  Just  because  Haiti  con- 
trols one  of  the  principal  approaches  to  the  Isthmus  of 
Panama,  foreign  benefactors  have  had  to  be  excluded 
at  all  costs.^  While  the  United  States  on  its  part  has 
had  to  keep  its  hands  off  or  run  the  risk  of  making 

*  A  careful  list  of  these  convulsions  will  be  found  in  Bonsai,  The 
American  Mediterranean,  pp.   407-409. 

'  On  this  see  MacCorkle,  The  Monroe  Doctrine  in  its  Relation  to  the 
Republic  of  Haiti.  In  pursuance  of  this  policy  we  have  developed  in 
recent  years  what  has  been  termed  the  policy  of  "custom  house  pro- 
tectorates." We  established  one  over  Santo  Domingo  in  1907  and 
over  Nicaragua  in  1912.  On  this  last  see  A.  R.  Thompson's  statement 
in  The  World's  Work  for  March,   1916,  pp.  49   ff. 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  155 

itself  hated  by  those  very  peoples  whose  independence 
it  wished  to  protect. 

Two  outstanding  facts  in  connection  with  Haiti's 
past  must  be  dwelt  upon.  The  first,  that  from  begin- 
ning to  end  the  military  have  dominated;  presidents 
or  emperors  have  always  governed  with  the  sword. 
Statesmanship  and  oratory  have  found  no  place  in 
political  campaigns,  and  the  proverbially  mighty  pen 
has  been  significantly  idle.  To  rule  has  meant  to  com- 
mand the  largest  body  of  troops,  and  tenure  of  office 
has  meant  continued  control  of  those  troops.  The 
poor  privates  have  been  "enlisted"  by  violent  means, 
and  books  on  Haiti  resound  with  the  sad  stories  of 
men  tortured  or  terrified  into  service.  One  serious 
economic  result  of  this  state  of  affairs  is  reported  by 
Bishop  Colmore.  Speaking  of  the  miserable  poverty 
which  he  has  found  in  the  country  districts,  he  says : 

The  men  have  for  the  past  few  years  feared  to  show  them- 
selves anywhere  on  the  public  highways,  or  even  on  their  own 
farms,  since  they  knew  that  when  seen  they  would  be  arrested 
by  the  authorities  and  impressed  into  military  service.  Also 
they  have  found  it  discouraging  to  try  to  raise  a  crop,  for 
when  successful  they  have  had  to  divide  the  harvest  most 
unequally  with  the  military  commander  of  the  district.  These 
conditions  having  existed  for  years,  and  the  country  having 
suffered  from  constant  revolutions,  the  economic  condition 
of  the  people  has  become  difficult  in  the  extreme.  This 
should  not  be,  since  the  soil  of  Haiti  is  as  fertile  as  can  be, 
and  the  country  is  practically  free  from  the  difficulties  of 
the  absentee  landlord.  A  large  proportion  of  the  men  in 
Haiti  own  small  tracts  of  land  from  which  they  can  secure 
the  necessaries  of  life. 

As  is  always  the  case  in  splendor-loving  lands,  titles 
of  much  grandiloquence  have  been  conferred  helter- 
skelter.  Pritchard  relates  that  the  army  of  1867  had 
6,500  common  soldiers,  7,000  regimental  officers,  and 
6,500  Generals  of  Division !  In  fact,  a  whole  chapter 
is  devoted  by  that  writer  to  the  Haitian  general,  since 


156  THE   NEW   WORLD 

in  his  study  of  the  land  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
that  class  was  the  problem  of  the  island. 

The  second,  and  perhaps  most  important  thing  to 
know  about  the  land  where  the  Black  Man  rules,  is 
Voodooism,  and  now  we  are  upon  dangerous  ground. 
"There  is  one  thing  common  to  the  whole  country," 
writes  Pritchard,  "of  which  every  Haitian  denies  the 
existence.  Vaudoux  ^  is  the  one  thing  which  they 
all  declare  they  have  not." 

When  we  analyze  the  statements  made  about  this, 
we  find  that  while  Haitians  seem  to  try  to  evade  the 
charge  of  being  Voodooists,  all  foreigners  who  have 
visited  the  island  are  convinced  that  the  cult  permeates 
the  whole  people.  The  only  thing  about  which  in- 
vestigators disagree  is  whether  there  are  human  sacri- 
fices or  not.  Bonsai  says  that  he  is  "prepared  to  sub- 
stantiate in  every  particular,  upon  evidence  which 
appears  to  me,  and  to  many  others  to  whom  I  have 
submitted  it,  to  be  absolutely  unimpeachable"  ^  certain 
stories  about  cannibalism  and  the  sacrifice  of  children 
to  Voodoo  going  on  today.  On  the  other  hand,  Bishop 
Colmore  says,  "I  have  not  been  able  to  find  any  evi- 
dence to  prove  that  human  sacrifices  are  offered."  ^ 

Such  are  the  pro  and  con  of  the  Voodoo  dispute. 
It  is  not  a  question  of  whether  the  cult  exists  but  of  the 
extent  to  which  its  practices  go.  So  far  as  we  are 
concerned  its  importance  lies  in  its  influence  upon  the 
people.    In  any  study  of  the  Haitians  we  must,  if  we 

^Voodoo  and  Vaudoux  are  interchangeable  words;  the  former  would 
appear  to  be  the  English  corruption  of  the  Creole  French  "Vaudoux," 
This  Creole  word  probably  comes  from  "Vaudois."  The  Vaudois  were 
Waldensians,  a  sect  which  broke  off  from  the  Church  in  the  twelfth 
century  and  because  of  their  schism  were  accused  of  sorcery. 

2  Bonsai,  American  Mediterranean,  p.   90. 

'  Those  desirous  of  going  into  the  matter  further  should  read  the 
report  of  the  public  trial  in  St.  John,  Haiti,  pp.  196-207.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  note  that  Bishop  Coxe  was  convinced  of  the  existence  of 
cannibalism  in  1872.     See  Spirit  of  Missions,  Vol.  XXXVIII,  p.  322  ff. 

It  _  would  not  be  fair  at  this  point  to  omit  reference  to  Leger's 
Haiti,  Her  History  and  Detractors.  Mr.  Leger  with  some  bitterness 
denounces  as  untrue  the  statements  in   St.   John  and   Pritchard. 


BISHOP    HOLLY 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  157 

are  to  help  them,  have  a  sympathetic  understanding  of 
these  things,  for,  though  we  cannot  say  just  how  crude 
their  rites  have  been,  we  at  least  are  sure  that  in  form- 
ing their  characters  Voodooism  has  played  a  real  and 
mischievous  part. 

To  come  down  to  the  thing  itself,  Voodooism  is 
a  crude  form  of  that  very  prevalent  (among  primitive 
peoples)  form  of  religion  which  we  call  for  want  of  a 
better  name  snake  worship.  In  all  parts  of  the  world 
and  at  all  times  the  serpent  has  been  an  object  of 
reverence.  It  has  been  taken  to  typify  wisdom,  wealth, 
and  subtle  power.  The  gods  of  India  have  been  wor- 
shiped in  the  guise  of  snakes ;  among  the  Greeks  this 
was  not  uncommon  (^sculapius  was  associated  at 
times  with  serpents)  ;  Mexico's  worship  of  Quetzal- 
coatl  reveals  a  fascinating  phase  of  it;  in  Egypt  the 
cult  was  well-known,  and  many  other  illustrations,  such 
as  Moloch,  Baal,  Ceredwyn,  etc.,  could  be  given  to 
show  the  almost  universality  of  the  idea.^ 

Voodooism  then  is  modern,  crude  snake  worship. 
The  peculiar  kind  of  snake  worshiped  in  Haiti  is  a 
little  green  serpent,  said  to  be  perfectly  harmless. 
Bonsai  avows  that  that  particular  snake  no  longer 
exists  on  the  island,  and  he  very  strongly  suspects 
that  the  actual  objects  of  worship  are  reptiles  that  have 
been  pickled. 

The  form  of  worship  is  typical.  The  snake  alive  or 
dead  is  kept  in  a  box  which  serves,  one  might  say, 
for  the  altar  at  the  rites. 

The  occasion  for  gathering  together  for  ceremonies 
would  appear  to  be  sacrificial.  Some  individual  de- 
sires to  have  an  offering  made  in  the  interests  of  this 
or  that  person.     Accordingly  the  papaloi  and  mama- 

1  Some  students  would  see  traces  of  the  belief  in  the  serpent's  wis- 
dom in  the  Garden  of  Eden  story  and  in  the  account  of  Moses  holding 
up  the  serpent  in  the  wilderness.  For  a  thorough  exposition  of  this 
matter  see  the  article  on  serpent  worship  in  the  last  edition  of  the 
Encyclopedia  Britannica,  or  W.  Williamson,  The  Great  Law,  p.  90  ff. 


158  THE   NEW   WORLD 

loi,  corruptions  of  papa  le  roi  and  mama  le  roi  [sic], 
prepare  the  sacrificial  chamber.  At  the  appointed  time, 
and  in  the  presence  of  devotees,  the  papaloi  and  mama- 
loi,  dressed  in  true  African  gaudery,  dance  through 
an  orgy  the  details  of  which  had  best  be  omitted. 
There  are  different  kinds  of  offerings  made.  There 
are  two  sects,  those  who  delight  in  the  blood  and  flesh 
of  white  cocks  and  spotless  white  goats,  and  those  who 
not  only  are  devoted  to  these  but  on  great  occasions 
call  for  the  flesh  and  blood  of  the  "goat  without  horns," 
or  human  victims.  As  already  indicated,  the  existence 
of  the  latter  sect  at  the  present  time  is  questioned. 
Descriptions  of  these  ceremonies  can  be  found  in  any 
of  the  writers  to  whom  we  have  been  referring. 

In  common  with  all  other  snake  worshipers  the 
Haitians  attribute  to  the  serpent  wisdom  and  power, 
specially  as  made  evident  in  drugs  prepared  with 
mystic  incantations.  Many  are  the  stories  one  hears 
of  astonishing  cures  and  transformations  made  by  these 
drugs.  One  feels  reticent  about  them,  and  yet  they 
present  a  phase  of  the  subject  of  which  the  student 
should  not  remain  in  ignorance.  From  a  lot  of  ma- 
terial here  are  one  or  two  stories  which  are  quite 
typical. 

A  certain  person  who  was  living  in  Port  au  Prince 
and  had  a  virulent  attack  of  a  serious  disease,  a  dis- 
ease which  is  not  cured  in  New  York  without  many 
months  of  treatment,  asserts  that  for  a  sum  of  money 
a  papaloi  cured  him,  with  a  curiously  medicated  leaf, 
in  a  week.  This  is  not  a  random  tale,  but  one  that 
came  to  the  writer  first-hand. 

Another  case  is  related  by  Pritchard.  An  engineer 
living  at  Petit  Goave  had  all  the  symptoms  of  African 
beri-beri.  The  regular  M.D.'s  having  given  him  up, 
he  sent  for  the  nearest  papaloi,  who  for  fifty  dollars 
prepared,  with  many  incantations  of  course,  a  thick 
brown  bath  of  leaves.     Into  this  the  sick  man  was 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  159 

plunged  and  three  days  later  was  able  to  return  to 
work.^ 

Nor  would  their  knowledge  of  drugs  seem  to  be 
limited  to  specifics  for  diseases.  Perhaps  their  best 
known  achievement  is  their  ability  to  give  a  drug  which 
produces  a  sleep  indistinguishable  from  death.  Bonsai 
tells,  for  example,  of  the  case  ^  of  a  man  who  died  and 
was  buried.  The  attending  physician,  a  man  of  "un- 
doubted probity,"  declared  that  there  was  nothing  un- 
usual in  the  case.  Two  days  later  his  widow,  on  going 
to  the  cemetery,  found  the  grave  open  and  the  body 
gone.  Twenty-four  hours  after  that  discovery,  a  mail 
rider  from  Jacmel  entered  Port  au  Prince  with  the 
deceased  entirely  alive,  but  clothed,  not  only  in  grave 
clothes,  but  in  his  zvrong  mind, — clean  daft.  The  mail 
rider  reported  that  he  had  saved  the  live-deceased  from 
a  band  of  Voodooists  in  the  mountains.^ 

Bishop  Colmore,  writing  about  this  says: 

Many  believe  that  those  versed  in  the  cult  can  control  others 
through  cunjers  and  hoodoos,  even  to  the  extent  of  suspend- 
ing animation.  When  one  dies  they  often  think  that  the 
person  is  only  in  a  trance,  and  that  after  being  buried,  the 
voodooist  can  exhume  the  iDody  and  restore  life.  The  person 
in  that  case  would  be  entirely  in  the  control  of  the  voodooist 
and  would  be  spirited  away  to  some  remote  part  of  the 
country^  and  have  to  spend  the  rest  of  his  hfe  as  a  slave. 
There  is  nothing  that  the  Haitian  abhors  more  than  the 
idea  of  slavery,  so  many,  I  am  told,  even  among  the  better 
class,  will  go  to  the  dead  person  secretly  and  force  a  large 
dose  of  poison  down  his  throat,  to  make  sure  that  he  is 
really  dead,  and  free  from  the  servitude  of  any  supposed  con- 
jurer. 

From  such  a  veritable  chaos,  political  and  spiritual, 
the  people  of  the  Black  Republic  are  endeavoring  to 

»Cf.    St.    Tohn,   Hayti,   p.   216   ff. 

"  Bonsai,   The  American  Mediterranean,  p.   45   £F. 

'  For  further  statements  on  this  secret  drug  power  of  the  Voodoo 
leaders  see  Pritchard,  op.  cit.,  pp.  93-101;  St.  John,  op.  cit.,  p^  217  ff.; 
Verrill,  Pcrto  Rico  Past  and  Present  and  San  Domingo  of  To-day,  p. 
353  ff.;  Ober,  A  Guide  to  the  West  Indies,  pp.  267,  268;  Underbill, 
The  West  Indies,  Their  Social  and  Religious  Condition,  pp.   159-163. 


160  THE   NEW   WORLD 

rise,  and  who,  reading  of  their  superstition  and  ignor- 
ance, can  fail  to  hear  the  appeal  for  help?  Is  there 
any  spot  in  all  the  world  where  the  Church  is  more 
needed?  And,  to  bring  the  appeal  home,  these  things 
have  been  going  on  in  a  place  no  further  distant  from 
New  York  than  is  Minneapolis. 

Before  turning  to  the  survey  of  the  story  of  the 
Church  in  Haiti,  a  few  paragraphs  should  be  added 
about  its  present  political  condition.  At  the  time  of 
writing,  its  president  is  General  Sudre  Dartiguenave. 
Under  him  is  a  Chamber  of  Communes  of  ninety-nine 
members  (one  for  each  Commune),  chosen  for  three 
years  by  a  (theoretical)  direct  popular  vote;  and  a 
Senate  of  thirty-nine  members,  chosen  for  six  years  by 
the  members  of  the  Chamber  of  Communes  from  a  list 
made  up  partly  by  the  president  and  partly  by  the 
electors.  The  president's  legal  term  of  office  is  seven 
years. 

The  area  of  the  republic  is  approximately  10,200 
square  miles,  and  its  population  in  the  neighborhood 
of  two  and  a  half  millions.  It  is  said  that  the  vast 
majority  of  these  are  pure  negroes,  though  there  are 
many  mulattos,  descended  from  former  French  set- 
tlers. Altogether  there  are  about  five  thousand  foreign- 
ers on  the  island,  five  hundred  of  whom  are  white, 
though  it  should  be  noted  that  technically  the  white 
man  cannot  own  property  in  the  republic.  Port  au 
Prince,  the  capital,  has  about  a  hundred  thousand  in- 
habitants;  Cap  Haitien,  thirty  thousand;  Les  Cayes, 
twelve  thousand. 

The  official  religion  of  the  island  is  Roman  Catholi- 
cism, but,  as  Bishop  Colmore  has  pointed  out,  despite 
the  fact  that  the  children  are  all  brought  to  be  baptized 
without  fail,  a  large  majority  of  those  who  bring 
them  to  baptism  are  out  and  out  believers  in  Voodoo. 
The  Roman  priests  admit  that  this  fact  is  only  too  true. 
To  combat  the  ignorance  of  the  people  the  government 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  161 

has  done  but  little.  Though  it  appropriates  a  million 
dollars  a  year  for  public  instruction,  education  is  a 
minus  quantity  in  the  rural  districts. 

As  has  been  pointed  out  a  thousand  times,  what 
always  brings  turbulent  countries  like  Haiti  to  the  end 
of  their  tether  is  debt.  Naturally,  finances  go  from  bad 
to  worse  where  revolution  and  graft  dominate ;  they 
became  so  involved  in  the  Black  Republic  in  recent 
years  that  a  crisis  was  precipitated  which  compelled 
our  government  to  abandon  its  policy  of  non-inter- 
ference. The  revenue,  derived  almost  entirely  from 
customs,  was  in  the  year  1913-14,  $4,788,000;  but 
against  this  income  was  a  forbidding  fixed  charge  of 
$2,882,468  on  the  national  debt ;  and  most  of  this  debt 
had  been  made  in  Europe.  What  with  the  entire  ab- 
sence of  efficiency  in  the  administration  of  the  treas- 
ury, and  with  the  frequent  demands  for  improvemet 
coming  from  justly  enraged  creditors  in  Europe,  the 
situation  had  become  impossible,  internationally  speak- 
ing,— a  sad  commentary,  by  the  way,  on  the  world's 
system  of  values,  that  dollars  and  cents  had  to  de- 
cide when  the  situation  had  become  serious ! 

At  length  in  the  summer  of  1915  the  last  straw 
was  laid  upon  the  camel's  back.  Guillaume  Sam,  said 
to  be  the  illegitimate  son  of  Simon  of  that  ilk,  had 
been  ''president"  since  March,  but  his  armed  backers 
had  been  gradually  diminishing  in  number.  Suddenly 
on  the  27th  of  July  his  enemies,  after  a  very  bloody 
fight,  got  the  upper  hand  and  according  to  Mr.  Mar- 
vin, in  an  apparently  authentic  account,^  murdered 
Guillaume  Sam  after  violating  his  sanctuary  in  the 
French  legation.  Though  we  held  no  brief  for  Sam 
we  could  not  let  this  last  disregard  of  all  international 
rights  go  by,  and  accordingly  Admiral  Caperton  landed 
500  marines  and  put  Port  au  Prince  under  martial  law. 

*  See  "Assassination   and   Intervention   in  Hayti,'*  by  George  Marvin 
in  The  World's  Work.  Feb.,   1916,  p.  404  ff. 


162  THE   NEW   WORLD 

There  followed  a  series  of  conferences  which  ended 
most  auspiciously  in  the  drawing  up  of  a  convention 
in  accordance  with  which  "the  President  of  Haiti 
should  appoint  upon  nomination  by  the  President  of 
the  United  States,  a  general  receiver  and  such  aids 
and  employees  as  may  be  necessary,"  to  administer  the 
finances  and  assure  the  tranquillity  of  the  country.^ 
The  extent  to  which  our  help  is  to  be  given  is  con- 
siderable. Just  now  we  have  about  1,800  marines  dis- 
tributed around  the  country  teaching  the  people  the 
elements  of  peace  and  industry.  This  state  of  affairs 
IS  to  be  continued  for  ten  years,  and  we  may  hope 
that  in  that  period — the  first  peaceful  one  that  the 
poor  people  will  have  ever  experienced — a  real  begin- 
ning may  be  made  in  the  knowledge  of  self-govern- 
ment. 

THE  CHURCH  IN  HAITI 

James  Theodore  Holly  was  born  of  free  black  par- 
ents in  the  city  of  Washington,  in  the  year  1829.  His 
father  and  mother  were  Roman  Catholics.  Owing  to 
their  nomadic  disposition,  his  early  years  were  spent 
now  in  New  York,  now  in  Brooklyn,  now  in  Cleve- 
land; most  of  his  education  seems  to  have  been  re- 
ceived in  the  public  schools  of  the  first  two  cities.  At 
the  age  of  twenty-one  he  renounced  his  Roman  al- 
legiance and  shortly  afterward  applied  for  Orders 
in  the  Church. 

In  June,  1855,  Holly  was  ordained  deacon  by  Bishop 

*It  is  cheerful  to  note  that  the  Haitians  realize  that  we  are  really 
acting  for  their  good.  A  committee  of  its  senate,  appointed  to  inves- 
tigate the  effect  of  the  new  treaty  upon  Haitian  independence,  reported: 

"La  Commission^  admit  que _  les  bons  offices  du  gouvernement  des 
Etats-Unis  offerts  a  la  Republique  d'Haiti  pour  I'aider  a  *  developper 
efficacement  ses  ressources  agricoles,  minieres  et  commerciales  et  etablir 
sur  une  base  solide  ses  finances  *  ne  constituent  aucune  atteinte  a  I'exer- 
cice  de  la  Souverainete  Rationale.  Au  contraire,  un  tel  concours  offert 
spontanement  par  un  si  puissant  voisin,  c'est  la  consecration  meme  de 
notre  independence  politique,"  Le  Moniteur,  Port-au-Prince.  Mercredi, 
10  Novembre,  1915  (the  official  iournal  of  the  Haitian  Republic,  appear- 
ing Wednesdays  and  Saturdays). 


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NEAR  NEIGHBORS  163 

McCoskry,  of  Michigan,  in  which  diocese  he  was  liv- 
ing at  that  time,  and  shortly  thereafter  came  to  New 
York  to  obtain  the  permission  of  the  Foreign  Com- 
mittee of  the  Board  of  Missions  to  go  on  a  visit  of  in- 
spection to  Haiti.  His  request  was  granted  and  a  trip 
of  two  months'  duration  followed.  On  his  return,  he 
reported  that  the  island  was  painfully  in  need  of  mis- 
sionaries and  offered  himself  as  a  volunteer.  There 
being  no  funds,  however,  with  which  to  open  a  new 
field  Holly  had  to  accept  a  gracious  declination. 
Shortly  thereafter  he  was  called  to  St.  Luke's  Church, 
New  Haven,  Connecticut,  where  he  remained  until 
1861.  In  that  year,  after  having  been  ordained  priest 
by  Bishop  Williams,  of  Connecticut,  he  went  out  as 
a  member  of  an  emigration  colony  to  Haiti.  There 
were  111  altogether  who  made  this  adventure,  chiefly 
from  Connecticut.  Undoubtedly  their  exodus  was  in- 
spired by  those  other  and  much  larger  expeditions 
which  had  been  made  to  Liberia  not  so  very  long 
before.  In  fact,  emigration  en  masse  as  a  solution  to 
the  negro  problem  was  very  much  in  the  air  at  that 
time. 

After  sixteen  months  with  the  colonists.  Holly  re- 
turned to  America  to  plead  Haiti's  cause  at  the  Gen- 
eral Convention.  Though  the  Convention  heard  him 
gladly,  the  Foreign  Committee  was  unable  to  do  any- 
thing and  he  turned  at  last  to  the  American  Church 
Missionary  Society.^ 

The  first  official  record  of  the  connection  of  Holly 
with  that  society  will  be  found  in  the  Fourth  Annual 
Report,  dated  October  15,  1863.     There  we  read: 

During  the  last  autumn  the  attention  of  the  committee 
was  called  to  what  appeared  a  singularly  providential  open- 
ing for  missionary  efforts  in  the  Island  of  Haiti.  The  Rev. 
J.  Theodore  Holly,  a  clergyman  of  our  Church,  went  out  in 
1861    with   a   colony   of   over   one   hundred   emigrants    from 

»  Spirit  of  Missions,  Vol.  XL.  p.  599  ff. 


164  THE  NEW   WORLD 

the  United  States,  and  settled  with  them  in  that  island.  The 
colony  was  located  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  city  of  Port 
au  Prince.  Mr.  Holly  immediately  established  the  services 
of  our  Church  among  them,  which  have  been  continued  to 
the  present  time.  These  services  have  awakened  so  much 
interest,  not  only  among  the  colonists,  but  also  in  Port  au 
Prince,  that  our  committee  have  been  requested  to  cooperate 
in  establishing  our  Church  on  a  firm  basis  in  that  island.  The 
committee  did  not  feel  at  liberty  to  dismiss  such  an  applica- 
tion without  making  all  due  inquiries  as  to  the  need  and 
prospects  of  such  a  mission.  Upon  application  to  the  Presid- 
ing Bishop,  he  at  once  appointed  the  Bishop  of  Delaware  to 
make  an  episcopal  visit  to  Haiti,  and  ascertain  the  condition 
of  these  people,  and  perform  such  official  acts  as  might  be 
needed.  Hitherto,  circumstances  have  delayed  the  Bishop's 
visit.  It  is  now  expected  that  he  will  sail  during  the  month 
of  October.  The  committee  are  assured  that  the  Bishop  will 
receive  a  most  cordial  reception,  not  only  from  the  missionary 
and  the  colonists,  but  from  the  President  and  other  officers 
of  government.^  A  hall  has  been  tastefully  fitted  up  in  the 
city,  where  services  have  been  regularly  held  since  last  spring, 
and  where  a  respectable  congregation  and  Sunday  school 
have  been  collected.  So  far  as  can  now  be  judged,  the 
opening  for  a  most  successful  mission  seems  to  be  great. 

The  Bishop  of  Delaware  made  the  promised  visit 
to  the  field  in  October,  1863.  Of  it  he  reported  to 
the  Society  enthusiastically: 

We  held  divine  service  on  Sundays,  the  first,  eighth, 
fifteenth,  and  twenty-second  of  November,  partly  in  Enghsh 
and  partly  in  the  French  language,  the  latter  services  being 
conducted  by  the  Rev.  C.  H.  Williamson  [wrote  the  Bishop]. 
The  place  in  which  our  ministrations  were  held  was  a  hall, 
ordinarily  used  for  concerts  and  similar  entertainments,  the 
gratuitous  use  of  which  had  been  kindly  tendered  to  Mr. 
Holly  by  Mr.  John  Hepburn.  Many  of  the  foreign  residents 
make  the  room  so  occupied  an  objection  to  attending  Mr. 
Holly's  services.  It  is,  however,  the  only  place  that  can  be 
obtained,  and  is  cool  and  commodious.  Mr.  Holly  had  made 
such  arrangements  as  were  practicable  for  the  decent  and 
impressive  celebration  of  divine  worship.  Our  congregations 
were  full  and  attentive,  comprising  the  American  Minister 
and  Consul,  some  of  the  foreign  residents,  including  a  large 
and  interesting  English  family,  a  number  of  American  colo- 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  165 

nists,  and  many  native  Haitians.  When  the  services  were  in 
French,  the  latter  formed  a  large  majority  of  those  present, 
and  the  males  considerably  outnumbered  the  females.  This 
is  quite  the  reverse  of  what  is  seen  in  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church,  which  the  more  intelligent  of  the  men  have  almost 
deserted,  except  on  great  public  occasions. 

On  Sunday,  the  first  of  November,  I  administered  the  Lord's 
Supper  to  about  thirty  communicants.  On  the  eighth,  I  ad- 
ministered the  rite  of  Confirmation,  laying  hands  upon  sixteen 
persons.  On  the  twenty-second,  I  held  a  second  confirmation, 
when  ten  were  confirmed.  The  candidates  were  mostly  of 
mature  years  and  heads  of  families.  They  were  all  colored 
(mulatto)  or  black,  except  five  young  persons  of  the  English 
family  above  mentioned.  Their  deportment  was  serious  and 
becoming,  and  I  was  encouraged  to  believe  that  their  pro- 
fession of  faith  was  intelligent  and  sincere.  .    .    . 

Such  was  the  official  beginning  of  the  mission.  And 
a  serious,  solid  beginning  it  was.  There  was  no 
emotionalism  or  superficiality  about  it.  One  dare 
assert  that  in  no  corner  of  the  world  has  an  infant 
Church  laid  better  foundations.  A  trenchant  evidence 
of  Holly's  own  self-sacrifice  and  sterling  worth  is  the 
fact  that  in  those  early  years  he  labored  to  keep  things 
afloat,  like  the  first  apostle  to  the  Gentiles,  with  his 
own  hands.  He  had,  by  the  way,  been  a  cobbler  in 
his  youth,  and  this  bore  him  in  good  stead  in  those 
hungry  days  during  our  Civil  War. 

Nor  were  Holly's  labors  in  vain,  since  only  three 
years  after  arriving  he  reported  that  twenty-five  fami- 
lies were  welcoming  his  ministrations ;  that  he  had  a 
Sunday  school  with  thirty  scholars  and  six  teachers; 
and  that  in  communion  alms  for  the  year  he  had  re- 
ceived six  hundred  and  forty-nine  gourdes  and  twenty- 
two  centimes.  Further,  in  Port  au  Prince  seven  thou- 
sand seven  hundred  gourdes  had  been  subscribed 
toward  buying  a  lot  for  a  church.  It  might  be  inter- 
esting to  add  that  the  American  Church  Missionary 
Society  appropriated  at  that  time  between  five  and  six 
thousand  dollars  a  year  to  the  work. 


166  THE  NEW   WORLD 

Just  why  we  are  not  informed,  but  probably  be- 
cause it  preferred  to  limit  its  activities  to  the  domestic 
field,  that  Society  transferred  the  responsibility  for 
this  undertaking  to  the  Board  of  Missions  in  1866. 
The   resolutions   under   which  this   was   done   read: 

Resolved:  That  the  Executive  Committee  [of  the  Domestic 
and  Foreign  Missionary  Society]  be  advised  that  it  is  the 
desire  of  this  Society  that  the  Haitian  Mission  be  tendered 
to  the  Foreign  Committee  for  its  adoption  and  care. 

Resolved:  That  the  Treasurer  of  this  Society  be  directed, 
on  the  acceptance  of  this  Mission  by  the  Foreign  Committee, 
to  pay  to  its  Treasurer  all  funds  now  in  hand  or  which  shall 
hereafter  be  contributed  for  that  special  object.^ 

In  response  to  this,  the  Foreign  Committee  voted 
at  once  to  accept  the  work  and  asked  Bishop  Burgess 
of  Maine  to  make  an  episcopal  visitation  to  the  island 
in  its  behalf. 

Of  the  events  connected  with  this  visit  of  Bishop 
Burgess,  made  in  the  latter  part  of  1866,  none  were 
quite  so  important  and  welcome  as  the  inauguration 
by  him  of  a  native  ministry.  At  Port  au  Prince 
he  ordained  two  men  to  the  ministry  and  accepted  ap- 
plications for  Holy  Orders  from  six  more.  These 
acts  were  of  wide  importance  since  they  show  how 
it  came  to  pass  that  the  Haitian  field,  from  the  very 
beginning,  has  been  ministered  to  by  its  own  people. 
They  show  also  the  extent  and  depth  of  Holly's  states- 
manship. Realizing  that  Haiti  must  in  the  last  resort 
be  led  by  Haitians, — not  only  realizing  this,  but  con- 
centrating his  efforts  upon  it,  he  succeeded  within  a 
few  years  in  bringing  the  desired  end  to  pass. 

But  to  return  to  the  Bishop  of  Maine.  His  ministra- 
tions to  the  people  of  the  Black  Republic  were  his  last. 
On  the  way  home  he  died  at  sea,  and  many  remember 
him  as  a  martyr  to  that  cause.  A  church,  Holy 
Trinity,  subsequently  built  to  his  memory  in  Port  au 

^spirit  of  Missions,  Vol.  XXXI,  p.  25. 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  167 

Prince  stood  for  some  years  as  a  memorial  to  his 
memory.  Unfortunately,  it  was  destroyed  by  fire  in 
the  seventies. 

The  next  important  phase  in  the  growth  of  this 
mission  began  six  years  after  Bishop  Burgess's  death. 
As  one  might  expect,  it  was  introduced  by  the  demand 
for  a  native  bishop. 

In  the  October,  1872,  issue  of  the  Spirit  of  Mis- 
sions, there  is  a  letter  from  Mr.  Holly,  in  which  he 
says: 

Without  any  effort  on  our  part  to  proselyte  any  one  calling 
himself  a  member  in  communion  with  any  branch  of  the 
Christian  Church,  without  any  offer  of  employment  with  Mis- 
sionary stipend,  we  have  seen  a  Congregational  pastor,  a 
Wesleyan  pastor,  a  Baptist  pastor,  and  a  Roman  Catholic 
priest,  all  come  and  spontaneously  conform  to  our  Church, 
and  ask  our  Ministerial  Commission  to  labor  to  build  up  a 
branch  of  our  Church  in  Haiti. 

Now  of  these  persons,  one,  the  priest,  obtained  license  to 
minister,  but  only  by  making  a  voyage  to  this  country  to  make 
his  declaration  of  conformity  before  a  Bishop  here.  One  of 
the  others,  after  waiting  several  years  in  vain,  became  dis- 
couraged and  left  Haiti  for  British  Guiana.  Another  died 
recently  after  five  years'  fruitless  waiting.  The  remaining 
one  still  awaits  the  arrival  of  a  Bishop.^ 

It  was  to  study  this  appeal  that  Bishop  Coxe  visited 
the  island  in  1872.  From  Haiti  he  wrote  many  en- 
thusiastic letters  with  the  result  that  on  all  sides  interest 
was  aroused.  With  seven  priests  and  four  deacons,  all 
native,  Holly's  work  of  ten  years,  the  bishop  reported, 
had  certainly  been  worth  while.  Not  only  in  the 
towns  had  the  energetic  leader  achieved  comparatively 
large  results,  but  throughout  the  country  districts  he 
had  laid  firm  foundations.  Bishop  Colmore  tells  us 
today  that  one  of  the  most  hopeful  things  about  the 
mission  is  the  real  strength  of  the   Church  in  the 

» Spirit  of  Missions,  Vol.  XXXVII,  pp.  639,  640. 


168  THE   NEW   WORLD 

country  districts.  Not  only  are  the  people  baptized 
and  confirmed,  but  they  are  well  instructed  and  follow 
through  the  services  heartily. 

Between  the  years  1870  and  1875,  as  a  result  of 
Bishop  Coxe's  own  interest,  the  mission  was,  so  to 
speak,  at  the  height  of  its  popularity  in  the  States. 
But  the  problem  of  the  episcopate  had  reached  a  point 
where  something  had  to  be  done.  The  journey  to 
Port  au  Prince  from  the  United  States  was  an  arduous 
one,  and  unless  the  Foreign  Committee  of  the  Board 
were  willing  to  let  matters  drag  along  at  all  costs,  a 
change  had  to  be  made.  Should  a  bishop  be  sent  them, 
or  should  a  Haitian  be  consecrated?  Acting  on  the 
advise  of  Bishop  Coxe,  the  Foreign  Committee  sent 
for  Mr.  Holly,  and  held  many  conferences  with  him. 
The  result  was  that  at  the  Board  Meeting  of  October, 
1874,  a  Special  Committee  was  appointed  to  deal  with 
the  question,  consisting  of  Bishops  Cpxe  and  Little- 
john,  and  the  Rev.  Drs.  Haight  and  H.  C.  Potter,  and 
Mr.  Benjamin  Stark. 

The  questions  involved  were  summed  up  by  the 
committee's  report  as  follows: 

(1)  Shall  the  Mission  be  organized  as  a  Mission  of  this 
Church,  or  erected  into  an  independent  Haitien  Church,  aided 
by  our  nursing  care  and  watchful  oversight? 

(2)  In  any  case  shall  we  place  the  work  under  a  Bishop 
of  the  white  race,  sent  out  as  an  organizer  and  ruler,  rather 
than  as  a  Bishop  identified  with  his  diocese  and  people;  or 
shall  we  give  to  Haiti  as  their  first  Bishop,  some  one  already 
known  to  them,  and  by  race  and  citizenship  a  partner  in  all 
their  interests,  perils,  and  aspirations?  These  two  questions 
have  been  thoughtfully  considered,  and  with  the  following 
results: 

(1)  We  believe  that  the  Haitien  Mission  must  be  made  a 
National  Haitien  Church,  as  speedily  as  possible.  As  a  mere 
Mission,  it  will  always  be  a  foreign  interest  among  Haitiens, 
and  like  the  Wesleyan  Mission,  which  has  been  operating 
in  the  island  for  fifty  years,  it  will  languish  and  fail  to 
command  the  sympathy  and  affection  of  natives.  It  will  be 
regarded  as  the  church  of  certain   American  residents,   but 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  169 

will  never  spread  among  the  people.  The  fact  that  its  clergy 
are  all  Haitiens,  and  that  for  several  years  they  have  pre- 
sented themselves  to  popular  attention  as  the  seed  of  a 
National  Church,  has  already  operated  favorably  on  the 
minds  of  many  intelligent  Haitiens  and  has  been  felt  in  their 
National  Councils.  If  we  should  decide  on  giving  our  Mis- 
sion the  form  which  is  thus  proposed,  a  slight  constitutional 
alteration  will  be  necessary  in  our  own  organization;  but 
this  change  is  called  for  by  other  considerations  than  those 
of  the  Haitien  Mission,  as  will  be  shown  by  members  of  your 
committee,  should  the  question  of  such  change  in  the  con- 
stitution be  taken  up  at  the  present  meeting  of  the  board. 

(2)  Your  committee  were  at  first  disposed  to  believe  that 
a  Bishop  of  the  white  race  and  a  citizen  of  the  United  States 
going  out,  like  our  other  foreign  Missionary  Bishops,  to 
preside  over  the  work,  would  be  able  to  secure  many  ad- 
vantages which  a  co-citizen  of  the  Haitiens  would  not  be 
likely  at  once  to  command.  To  be  brief,  however,  they  found 
many  considerations  of  great  weight  on  the  other  side;  and 
recent  changes  in  Kaitien  affairs  have  led  them  to  regard 
such  considerations  as  preponderating  and  decisive.  By  an 
article  of  the  amended  Constitution  of  Haiti  the  superior 
ecclesiastics  of  any  form  of  religion,  established  in  the  Isle, 
must  be  Haitien  citizens  or  forfeit  all  claims  to  recognition 
as  ecclesiastics,  or  church  authorities,  in  the  courts  and 
councils  of  the  nation. ^  This  principle  has  been  adopted  on 
grounds  which  appear  to  us  very  important  to  the  welfare 
of  the  Haitien  people,  and  it  is  not  less  important  that  we 
should  recognize  it  and  conform  our  operations  to  it.  On  this 
ground,  then,  as  well  as  others,  we  are  convinced  that  it 
is  desirable  that  if  the  Mission  is  to  be  supplied  with  a 
Bishop  by  the  nursing  care  of  our  Church,  it  is  essential 
that  the  person  selected  should  be  of  the  colored  race,  and 
one  willing  to  identify  himself  with  the  Haitien  people,  as 
a  fellow-citizen,  if  not  already  a  native  or  naturalized  citizen 
of  that  republic.  Let  such  a  Bishop  be  sent  out  as  a  Mis- 
sionary Bishop  of  our  Church;  and  then,  let  him  as  speedily 
as  possible,  give  to  the  Mission  such  a  national  organization 
as  we  have  proposed,  under  sufficient  guarantees  to  entitle 
them  to  our  continued  co-operation  and  support.  The  Con- 
cordat between  Bishop  Seabury  and  the  Scottish  Church 
affords  us  a  precedent,  in  our  own  history,  for  such  an 
arrangement  with  the  Haitien  Diocese  as  shall  identify  their 
doctrine  and  worship  with  our  own,  in  all  essential  particulars, 

*This  ruling  was  changed  later  on,  so  that  Bishop  Colmore  is  fully 
recognized   "in   the  courts  and  councils  of  the  nation." 


170  THE   NEW   WORLD 

so  long  as  they  shall  remain,  in  any  degree,  dependent  on 
aid  from  us. 

Your  committee  have  therefore  agreed  to  present  the  fol- 
lowing resolutions : 

Resolved:  That  it  is  necessary  to  the  further  prosecution 
of  our  missionary  work  in  Haiti,  that  a  Missionary  Bishop 
should  be  consecrated  for  that  island.^ 

Resolved:  That  in  the  opinion  of  this  board  it  is  desirable, 
if  not  all-important,  that  such  Missionary  Bishop  should  be 
of  the  African  race,  and  invested  with  Haitien  citizenship. 

Resolved:  That  the  House  of  Bishops  are  hereby  respect- 
fully requested  to  elect  and  consecrate  a  Bishop  for  the 
Island  of  Haiti.^ 


These  preliminaries  had  to  such  an  extent  been  antic- 
ipated in  Haiti,  that  no  sooner  were  they  done  with 
than  Mr.  Holly  presented  evidence  of  his  having  been 
elected  bishop,  by  the  Haitian  clergy,  before  leaving 
the  island.  These  testimonials  having  been  found  satis- 
factory to  the  House  of  Bishops  then  sitting,  it 
proceeded  ^'according  to  Article  10  of  the  Constitution, 
to  choose,  designate,  and  consecrate,"  to  the  office  the 
man  thus  recommended  to  them. 

Further,  it  should  be  noted,  that  in  anticipation  of 
further  needs,  the  American  bishops  named  a  com- 
mittee of  bishops  "with  which  will  be  associated  the 
Bishop  consecrated  for  Haiti,  to  form  a  Board  of  Ad- 
ministration for  the  provisional  exercise  of  Episcopal 
discipline  in  Haiti,  and  to  take  measures  for  the  con- 
secration of  other  Haitian  bishops,  according  to  need, 
and  on  demand  of  the  Church  in  Haiti.  When  three 
bishops  at  least  shall  have  been  canonically  settled  in 
Haiti,  the  aforesaid  Board  will  cease  its  functions."  ^ 

Holly's  consecration  soon  followed  these  prelimi- 
naries, in  Grace  Church,  New  York,  on  the  8th  of 
November,  and  the  new  bishop  returned  to  his  work. 
Commenting  on  this,  an  eyewitness  said : 

^spirit  of  Missions,  Vol.  XXXIX,  Report  of  the  Board  of  Missions, 
p.    32. 


A    HAITIAN    SOLDIER 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  171 

Many  will  remember  the  crowded  edifice,  the  numerous 
people  of  the  new  Bishop's  own  race  and  color  who  gathered 
there  to  see  this  highesf  office  of  the  Church  conferred  upon 
one  of  themselves,  and  there  were  those  who  remarked  upon 
the  sweet-toned  earnest  voice  that  answered  to  the  solemn 
questions  then  put  to  one  of  a  hitherto  despised  race. 

What  England  had  done  for  Africa  ten  years  before  in 
sending  Crowther,  the  former  slave  boy,  to  minister  as  a 
Bishop  in  his  native  land,  the  Episcopal  Church  of  the 
United  States  had  now  done  for  Haiti. ^ 

Thus  began  the  independent  Haitian  Church.  That 
it  did  not  continue  to  grow  as  rapidly  after  1874  as 
it  did  before  must  be  ascribed,  not  to  the  inefficiency 
of  its  bishop,  but  to  a  multitude  of  reasons.  Prob- 
ably beneath  them  all,  though,  is  the  one  we  least  like  to 
give,  and  that  will  be  suspected  by  those  who  have  read 
the  first  part  of  this  chapter,  namely,  that  the  Haitians 
as  yet  have  not  developed  the  abilities  which  enable 
men  to  flourish  in  independence,  whether  ecclesiastical 
or  political. 

Bishop  Holly  died  March  13,  1911,  and  the  problem 
of  the  work  in  the  Black  Republic  had  to  be  taken  up 
again.  The  Haitian  Church  being  in  a  chaotic  con- 
dition and  not  knowing  which  way  to  turn,  asked  that 
an  American  bishop  be  sent  to  investigate  matters.  In 
response  a  deputation  with  Bishop  Knight  at  its  head 
went  down.  It  was  during  this  visit,  on  January  22, 
1912,  that  the  National  Convocation  of  their  Church 
voted  to  relinquish  its  autonom.y  and  sent  a  petition 
to  the  Church  in  the  United  States  asking  to  be  re- 
ceived once  again  as  a  missionary  district.  It  also  ex- 
pressed its  willingness  to  abide  by  whatever  arrange- 
ment might  be  made  by  the  House  of  Bishops. 

Pending  the  meeting  of  the  General  Convention  the 
Presiding  Bishop,  in  accordance  with  the  desire  of  the 
Haitian  Convocation,  appointed  the  Bishop  of  Cuba 
as  his  commissary  to  care  for  the  field.     Dr.  Knight 

^spirit  of  Missicms,  Vol.  XL,  p.  608. 


172  THE   NEW   WORLD 

very  shortly  made  a  visitation  and  reported  that  the 
condition  in  the  country  districts  was  very  satisfactory. 

At  the  General  Convention  which  met  in  New  York 
in  1913,  following  a  recommendation  from  the  Com- 
mittee on  Foreign  Missions,  the  House  of  Bishops 
voted  to  grant  the  petition  of  the  Orthodox  Apostolic 
Church  of  Haiti,  and  receive  it  again  as  a  foreign 
missionary  district.^  This  having  been  done,  the 
second  problem,  that  of  episcopal  supervision,  was 
taken  up  and  finally,  after  two  postponements,  it  was 
voted  that  the  bishop  of  the  missionary  district  of 
Porto  Rico,  "should  also  be  in  charge  of  the  mission- 
ary district  of  Haiti,  with  the  care  of  such  Christian 
people  in  Santo  Domingo  as  may  have  asked  or  may 
hereafter  ask  for  pastoral  oversight."  Thus  Haiti  once 
again  was  brought  within  the  fold,  in  this  instance 
under  the  supervision  of  the  newly  elected  Bishop  of 
Porto  Rico,  Dr.  Colmore. 

The  new  bishop  is  enthusiastic  about  the  Church's 
opportunity  in  the  Black  Republic.  He  feels  that  in 
the  clergy  now  in  charge,  he  has  an  unusually  apt  band 
of  assistants.    Writing  recently  he  said: 

Our  clergy  are  doing  a  good  work  in  the  cities,  but  it  is 
in  the  country  places  that  we  are  most  needed  and  where 
more  lasting  good  can  be  accomplished.  The  work  is  among 
people  who  are  ignorant,  simple,  and  wholly  lovable.  They 
are  teachable  and  from  them  we  must  expect  better  things 
in  the  future.  In  one  district  we  have  no  less  than  eighteen 
different  mission  stations  where  the  work  is  carried  on  by 
three  priests  and  a  deacon.  During  the  absence  of  the  clergy, 
the  lay  readers  conduct  the  services  and  very  well  trained  the 
people  are,  for  I  have  been  present  when  the  people  sang, 
unaccompanied  by  any  musical  instrument  and  without  prayer 
book,  all  the  parts  of  the  Eucharist  that  are  ordinarily  sung 
in  our  own  churches.  There  are  not  sufficient  prayer  books 
for  all  the  people,  nor  could  many  of  them  read  if  they  had 
them.  Our  chief  effort  with  these  people  after  the  evangelical 
work  must  be  in  an  educational  way.    There  are  several  of 

*  Journal  of  the  General  Convention  of  1913,  pp.  I^i,  77. 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  173 

our  clergy  who  have  been  educated  in  the  States.  Two 
young  men  are  at  St.  Paul's  School,  Lawrenceville,  Va.,  and 
at  least  three  more  are  anxious  and  ready  to  go  as  soon  as 
the  necessary  funds  can  be  secured  for  their  support.  The 
total  expense  for  a  boy  in  the  training  school  is  about  $130 
to  $150  a  year.  The  idea  is  that  each  young  man  should 
learn  some  trade  at  the  school  and  when  he  returns  to  his 
native  land  as  a  clergyman  of  the  Church,  he  will  be  able 
to  establish  a  school  where  this  trade  may  be  taught  as  a 
specialty.  With  five  or  six  of  these  parochial  schools  scat- 
tered throughout  the  country  districts,  much  lasting  good  can 
be  done  for  the  country  people. 

Meanwhile  the  work  in  the  cities  will  not  be  neglected. 
We  have  the  beginnings  of  school  work  and  a  very  creditable 
clinic  in  Port  au  Prince.  This  clinic  conducts  medical  work 
among  the  poor. 

As  to  the  people  whom  the  bishop  visits,  as  he  goes 
about  on  horseback  from  place  to  place  following  the 
mountain  trails, — which  trails,  by  the  way,  he  tells  us 
are  nothing  but  the  river-beds, — they  are  healthy,  ro- 
bust, long-lived  and  as  happy  as  the  proverbial  African 
of  the  cornfield.  They  all  dress  in  blue  denim.  They 
are  exemplars  of  courtesy;  sometimes,  the  bishop 
says,  he  will  have  to  accept  wayside  hospitality,  in- 
cluding a  cup  of  coffee,  as  many  as  eight  and  ten 
times  in  a  day.  They  own  their  small  farms,  but  sad 
to  say,  find  that  it  is  not  very  profitable  to  expend 
much  labor  upon  them,  lest  the  military  come  and  seize 
everything.  They  raise  chiefly  coffee,  cocoa,  sweet 
potatoes,  yams,  and  some  sugar  cane ;  their  diet  of  rice 
and  beans  is  almost  as  invariable  as  is  the  Chinaman's 
diet  of  rice  and  fish. 

Referring  to  the  clergy,  the  bishop  tells  the  follow- 
ing story : 

Promis  was  formerly  one  of  the  Voodoo  priests  or  "papa- 
loi."  On  one  occasion  he  had  prepared  a  feast  for  his  fol- 
lowers, and  a  sacrifice  was  to  be  offered  to  the  spirit.  A  fat 
beef  had  been  secured  for  the  feast-sacrifice,  but  before 
the  date  for  the  celebration  the  animal  died.    The  feast  had 


174  THE   NEW   WORLD 

to  be  postponed  and  the  next  time  Promis  provided  a  goat, 
but  this  time,  before  the  date  arrived,  the  goat  was  stolen. 
Very  much  disgusted,  Promis  began  to  think  that  if  his 
spirit  could  not  better  protect  the  animals  he  provided  for 
sacrifice,  he  would  not  continue  his  fealty.  He  at  once 
began  to  make  investigations  of  the  matter  and  applied  to 
some  of  our  clergy  and  lay  readers.  They  told  him  of  the 
worship  of  the  true  Spirit  within  the  Church  of  the  Living 
God,  and  persuaded  him  to  give  up  his  Voodoo  and  allow 
them  to  destroy  the  household  gods.  Promis  became  an  in- 
quirer and  was  finally  confirmed  in  the  Church,  There  is  now 
a  mission  near  his  house,  for  which  he  gave  the  land.  His 
son  is  a  devoted  lay  reader  and  serves  the  Church  faithfully. 
Promis  is  "promise";  suddenly  there  is  a  promise  of  a  more 
glorious  life  for  him  when  he  shall  stand  before  his  God 
and  Judge;  promise,  too,  of  greater  freedom  and  love  for 
himself  and  his  family  in  this  life.  The  Love  of  Christ  has 
changed  his  life  and  it  is  a  privilege  to  meet  him  with  his 
cheerful  and  gentle  manner.  He  certainly  is  one  of  God*s 
gentlemen. 

In  concluding  a  letter,  written  shortly  after  the  last 
treaty  had  been  made  with  the  United  States,  Bishop 
Colmore  said: 

The  United  States  has  undertaken  the  material  responsibility 
of  arranging  the  political  and  economic  conditions  in  the 
Republic.  God  grant  that  this  work  may  be  done  in  a  dis- 
interested and  magnanimous  manner,  but  how  far  will  we, 
as  a  nation,  fall  short  of  our  whole  duty  to  Haiti,  if  at  this 
time  we  do  not  assist  her  people  in  a  moral  and  spiritual 
way?  This  is  a  great  opportunity  which  is  before  us.  The 
young  men  of  Haiti,  trained  and  educated  in  the  Church  in 
the  United  States,  will  bring  large  returns  for  the  Kingdom 
of  God.  Haiti  needs  us  now;  let  us  not  fail  to  give  our- 
selves and  our  interest  to  help  her  work  out  her  own  salva- 
tion as  a  nation  and  as  a  people  of  God. 


NEAR  NEIGHBORS  175 


APPENDIX  TO  CHAPTER  V. 

There  is  no  map  on  which  all  the  stations  are  marked. 
The  following  is  a  reproduction  of  the  list  given  in  the 
Journal  of  the  Haitian  Convocation.  The  towns  are  starred. 
The  rest  of  the  work  is  in  the  country  districts. 

Town  or  Village  District  Church 

{Endroit)  {Commune) 

•Arcahaie Arcahaie    St.  Tames* 

Pois-la-Ravine     Arcahaie    St.  Peter's 

Azile   Leogane   St.  Luke's 

Bigone    Leogane   The  Good  News 

Buteau    Leogane   The  Good  Shepherd 

Deslandes     Leogane   The  Annunciation 

Dufaure    Leogane   St.  Stephen's 

Gros-Morne    Leogane   The  Resurrection 

*Leogane Leogane    The  Redemption 

Mitton    Leogane   St.  Andrew's 

Petit-Boucan    Leogane   St.   Tames  the  Great 

Petit-Harpon    Leogane   St.  John   the   Evangelist 

•Cavaillon Cavaillon   St.  Mark's 

•Cayes    Cayes   St.  Saviour's 

Macombe   Cayes   St.  James' 

Coustard     Thomazeau    The  Transfiguration 

Halte   Cadet    Thomazeau    The  Redemption 

O'Gorman    Thomazeau    St.  Matthew's 

Fond    Cheval    Mirebalais   St.  Jude's 

Trianon    Mirebalais    St.  Andrew's 

Gros-Morne   Gonaives    The  Resurrection 

Petit-Fond    Lascahobas    The  Good  Saviour 

•Port-au-Prince    Port-au-Prince    The  Holy  Trinity 

•Port-au-Prince    Port-au-Prince    The  Epiphany 

•Torbeck Aux  Cayes   St.  Paul's 

Turbc   Croix-des-Bouquets   .  .St.  James* 

Thirteen  clergymen  are  listed  in  the  report  of  the  Con- 
vocation of  1915. 

In  regard  to  the  pronunciation  of  Haiti:  if  Anglicized  it 
should  be  Hay-tee.  In  French  it  is  Ah-ee-tee.  There  is  no 
justification  for  the  half  french,  half  english  combination 
"High-tee." 


CHAPTER  VI 
TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS 

MEXICO 

No  nation  in  the  new  world  has  quite  so  interesting 
a  history  as  Mexico;  that  of  the  United  States  is 
prosaic  beside  it.  To  compress  what  has  to  be  said 
about  it  within  a  few  pages  is  to  take  almost  all  the 
juice  out  of  the  luscious  fruit.  One  would  like  to  tell 
of  the  days  of  the  Aztec's  glory, — when  Nezahual- 
coyotle  was  propounding  and  patronizing  a  religion  of 
startling  purity  and  profundity — Nezahualcoyotle  who 
built  great  palaces,  collected  literature,  aided  poets  and 
artists,  and  wrote  deeply  philosophical  prayers  to  *'the 
unknown  God."  One  would  like  to  record  some  of  the 
findings  of  the  archeologists  who  bring  home  to  us  the 
extraordinary  extent  of  that  ancient  civilization  by 
showing  that  in  some  respects  the  Aztec  language  sur- 
passed the  European  in  finish  and  elegance  of  expres- 
sion, and  that  those  who  used  it  were  so  advanced 
intellectually  that  their  vocabulary  contained  words  for 
1,200  different  species  of  plants.  What  other  primi- 
tive people  were  experts  in  botany  to  that  extent  ?  It 
is  a  well-known  fact  that  in  most  lands  to  which  mis- 
sionaries go  they  have  much  difficulty  in  telling  their 
Good  News  because  of  the  poverty  of  the  language  of 
the  natives.  In  ancient  Mexico  on  the  other  hand,  we 
are  told  that  the  missionaries  were  able  to  say  in  the 
Aztec  tongue  everything  they  wished  "about  the 
thunderings  or  anathemas  from  Sinai  or  the  sublime 
teachings  of  Christ."  ^ 


*  Terry,  Mexico,  p.  17. 


176 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  177 

Again  one  would  like  to  tell  of  the  days  when  the 
bloody  sacrifices  of  the  war  God  Huitzilopochtli  made 
terrible  the  fame  of  his  altars;  or  of  the  reign  of 
Montezuma,  and  of  the  splendors  of  his  court.  The 
story  of  that  epoch,  made  famous  by  Prescott  and 
Fiske  and  Bandelier,  is  one  with  which  all  students 
of  Mexico  should  be  familiar,  and  these  allusions  are 
made  principally  in  the  hope  of  stimulating  the  reader 
to  some  independent  reading. 

Then,  too,  one  would  like  to  tell  of  the  epoch  of 
the  Conquest.  Everybody  should  know  about  Her- 
nando Cortez  and  his  diplomatic-martial  achieve- 
ments; about  his  siege  of  the  city  of  Mexico  when, 
against  Montezuma's  great  and  well-entrenched  array, 
he  advanced  with  but  a  handful  of  soldiers ;  about  the 
Noche  Triste,  that  mournful  night  when,  in  answer  to 
the  summons  from  the  tomtom  on  the  great  Teocalli 
(sacrificial  pyramid)  the  hosts  of  the  Aztecs  swarmed 
like  wasps  about  the  retreating  Spaniards  and  all  but 
overpowered  them. 

Truly  those  were  resonant  days,  and  he  who  would 
understand  the  splendor  that  once  was  Mexico's,  and 
the  valor  and  resource  that  made  the  name  of  Spain 
feared  throughout  the  New  World,  should  read  about 
them.  For  our  part,  we  must  confine  ourselves  to  a  few 
of  the  more  significant  personages  and  happenings  in 
the  history  of  the  land,  and  in  the  first  place  we  shall  re- 
peat the  oft- told  tale  about  the  God  Quetzalcoatl  and 
the  prophecies  respecting  him. 

In  the  pantheon  of  Mexico,  Quetzalcoatl  stands  out 
clear  and  distinct.  In  fact  it  is  hard  to  find  any 
heathen  superstition  quite  so  fascinating  to  the  Chris- 
tian as  that  connected  with  this  Toltec  god  and  his 
promised  return.     The  story  is  as  follows: 

The  Toltecs,  a  people  who  came  "out  of  the  north," 
— God  alone  knows  whence — the  Toltecs,  predecessors 
of  the  Aztecs,  had  settled  in  what  is  now  Mexico  and 


178  THE  NEW  WORLD 

laid  the  foundations  of  a  wonderful  civilization.  Aye, 
more  than  foundations  did  they  lay.  They  themselves 
achieved  a  degree  of  culture  wherefrom  sprang  such 
products  as  cunningly  wrought  ornaments  of  gold  and 
silver,  and  well  woven  cotton  fabrics,  and  perennial 
buildings  of  finely  carved  stone,  and  picture  writing, 
marvelously  like  that  of  the  Egyptians. 

It  was  in  the  days  of  these  large  achievements  that 
the  traditions  about  the  mystic  God  Quetzalcoatl 
emerged ;  the  "god  of  the  air,"  "the  shining  serpent," — 
not,  according  to  Mr.  Bandelier,  "feathered  serpent." 

He  was  envisaged  as  a  white  man,  with  noble 
features,  long  beard,  and  flowing  garments.  He  had 
taught  a  religion  in  which  virtue  and  austerity  were 
dominant  and  the  sacrifice  of  human  beings  and  ani- 
mals forbidden — and  the  Toltecs  had  their  very  re- 
ligious being  in  sacrifice  of  living  things.  This  weird 
and  wonderful  creature,  the  legend  ran,  had  disappeared 
after  only  twenty  years  sojourn  in  Toltecland;  had 
disappeared  in  the  direction  of  the  rising  sun,  and, 
most  unaccountable  of  all,  had  promised  to  return 
bringing  plenty  and  peace. 

Like  the  faithful  among  the  Jews,  some  "waited 
for  the  expectation"  of  Quetzalcoatl,  of  Quetzalcoatl 
who  would  redeem  the  land  from  the  bloody  holo- 
causts to  which  it  had  been  doomed  by  the  bloody 
Huitzilopochtli.  So  strong  was  this  belief  that  it 
vitally  affected  the  issue  when  the  Spaniards  arrived 
from  the  direction  of  the  rising  sun.  At  first  they  were 
hailed  as  ambassadors  of  the  Fair  God,  and  the  rever- 
ence accorded  them  was  such  that  they  were  able  to 
advance  into  the  country  almost  unopposed.  In  fact 
the  subsequent  fall  of  the  Emperor  Montezuma  and 
the  Aztec  Empire  were  in  no  small  measure  due  to  the 
prevalence  of  this  superstition.^ 

*  Helps,  The  Spanish  Conquest  of  America,  I,  p.  203  and  II,  p.  188. 
Also  Fiske,  Discovery  of  America,  II,  pp.  237,  238. 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  179 

Such  is  the  story  of  Quetzalcoatl,  the  Mexican  mes- 
siah.  Can  we  not  say  that  God  had  marvelously  pre- 
pared the  way  for  the  coming  of  His  Church  in  that 
part  of  the  New  World  ?  And  must  we  not  see  in  the 
nigh  civilization  which  surrounded  the  men  of  the 
Toltec  days  a  portent  of  a  still  higher  civilization  yet 
to  be  won  for  our  neighbor  to  the  south? 

From  Quetzalcoatl  to  Juarez  is  a  long  jump,  but 
one  that  it  is  worth  while  making.  The  former  typi- 
fies the  high-water  mark  of  ancient  Mexico's  religious 
aspirations;  the  latter,  the  highest  point  her  political 
life  has  yet  reached.  As  the  Quetzalcoatl  legend 
shows  that  the  true  Mexicans  are  capable  of  dreaming 
great  dreams,  so  the  story  of  Juarez  reveals  the  capacity 
of  the  aborigines  to  do  great  things.  A  race  which 
could  develop  and  cherish  such  a  myth  as  that  of 
Quetzalcoatl  and  produce  such  a  leader  as  Juarez 
must  be  made  of  noble  stuff. 

The  Spaniards  had  conquered  Mexico,  and  three 
hundred  years  of  oppression  and  maladministration  had 
been  endured.  Under  their  yoke  Latin  America  had 
groaned,  until,  following  the  French  and  North  Ameri- 
can revolutions,  one  by  one  their  colonies  had  re- 
belled. The  three  centers  from  which  the  rebellions 
had  come  were  what  are  now  the  states  of  Vene- 
zuela, Argentine  Republic,  and  Mexico. 

As  in  other  lands,  economic  oppression  was  one  of 
the  chief  causes  of  complaint  in  Mexico.  Her  in- 
dustrial possibilities  had  been  suppressed,  her  trade 
with  China  prohibited,  her  vineyards  destroyed  lest 
the  vineyards  of  Spain  have  troublesome  competitors. 
On  top  of  this,  the  French  Emperor,  Napoleon,  had 
conquered  Spain  and  put  one  of  his  brothers  on  its 
throne,  and  confusion  worse  confounded  had  fol- 
lowed. Who  was  to  rule  Mexico?  The  old  or  the 
new  Spanish  rulers — the  descendants  of  the  Corsican 
or  those  of  Charles  V? 


180  THE   NEW   WORLD 

This  complication  had  seemed  specially  advantageous 
to  those  who  had  for  some  time  been  plotting-,  and  the 
patriot  priest,  Hidalgo,  had  started  the  revolutionary 
ball  rolling  in  1810,  with  his  famous  slogan  "Viva 
America !  Viva  Religion !  Death  to  bad  Govern- 
ment!" Though  Hidalgo  was  captured  and  shot  in 
1811,  and  though  many  subsequent  reverses  came  to 
the  revolutionists,  the  Spaniards  were  finally  worsted, 
and  their  last  flag  hauled  down  from  the  castle  of 
San  Juan  de  Ulua  at  Vera  Cruz  in  1825. 

There  followed  a  forty  year  period  of  pronuncia- 
mientos  ^  and  ''imprisonings,  seizings,  shootings,  exe- 
cutions, treachery,  cruelty,  and  bloodshed."  The  pro- 
fession of  arms  became  the  only  profitable  one  for 
men  with  ambition,  and  the  land  groaned  under  their 
yoke.  No  one  seemed  able  to  unite  the  discordant  fac- 
tions, every  man's  hand  was  against  his  neighbor. 
What  could  pacify  the  land?^ 

Then  came  the  endeavor  of  the  Emperor  Napoleon 
III  to  add  Mexico  to  his  domain.  With  this  end  in 
view,  and  taking  advantage  of  that  frequent  happen- 
ing in  Latin  America,  failure  to  pay  interest  on  cer-t 
tain  moneys  owed  to  Europeans,  he  had  made  and  set 
up  an  Austrian  Archduke,  Maximilian  by  name,  to  be 
Emperor  of  Mexico.  Excellent  man  that  Maximilian 
was,  though,  he  could  not  survive  the  cowardly  deser- 
tion to  which  Napoleon  subjected  him,  and  he  soon 
went  the  way  of  so  many  of  Mexico's  leaders, — was 
captured  by  his  enemies  and  set  up  before  a  firing 
squad. 

Meantime  Benito  Juarez  had  become  the  power 
behind  the   scenes,   and   it  is  to  his   character   and 

*  Whenever  a  new  decree  or  a  new  revolution  eventuates  in  Mexico, 
its  appearance  is  marked  by  a  pronunciamiento  or  efflorescent  declara- 
tion, generally  in  the  form  of  a  bulletin,  posted  at  all  conspicuous 
places. 

*  The  wars  between  Texas  and  Mexico,  and  the  United  States  and 
Mexico,  came  during  this  period,  with  the  result  that  Mexico  lost  what 
are  now  the  states  of  Texas,  California,  New  Mexico  and  Arizona. 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  181 

achievements  that  one  should  attend  if  he  would  see 
what  Mexican  Indians  can  be  like.  Juarez  was  a  pure 
blooded  Zapoteca  Indian.  No  Spanish  blood  coursed 
through  his  veins.  He  had  begun  life  as  a  shepherd, 
among  the  mountains  of  Oaxaca.  A  rude  adobe  hut 
with  thatched  roof  had  been  his  home,  while  the 
only  language  known  to  him  was  the  Zapotec  dialect. 
He  had  learned  Spanish  and  other  rudiments  of  educa- 
tion from  a  bookbinder  in  Oaxaca  whose  employ  he 
had  entered  in  1818.  From  1821  to  1832  he  had 
studied  in  a  clerical  school  and  had  been  admitted  to 
the  bar  shortly  after  graduation.  On  emerging  into 
public  life  his  sterling  ability  had  won  one  position  after 
another  for  him,  until  he  had  finally  been  elected 
Governor  of  the  Province.  During  his  incumbency 
he  had  prepared  and  issued  Mexico's  first  code  of 
criminal  laws. 

During  these  meteoric  years  he  had  been  known  as 
a  holder  of  liberal  opinions,  so  much  so  that  at  times 
he  had  suffered  considerably  for  his  belief.  Not  to  be 
deterred  though,  he  continued  propagating  them  with 
the  final  result  that  he  was  exiled  to  New  Orleans  in 
1853,  at  which  place  he  had  to  support  himself  as  a 
fruit  peddler.  By  1855  the  cause  for  which  he  labored 
had  gained  headway  enough  to  make  it  possible  for 
him  to  return  to  his  native  land,  where  within  a  short 
time  he  was  elected  by  the  liberals  to  the  office  of 
President  of  the  Republic. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  it  was  shortly  after  this 
that  the  Emperor  of  France  sought  surreptitiously  to 
add  Mexico  to  his  domain.  Naturally,  to  do  this 
President  Juarez  and  all  his  followers  had  to  be  ex- 
pelled, and  expelled  they  were  by  the  trained  and 
well-organized  troops  of  the  Third  Empire.  Though 
driven  from  the  capital  the  doughty  Juarez  had  by  no 
means  given  up  the  fight.  Establishing  himself  in 
various  towns  near  the  United  States  border,  he  had 


182  THE   NEW  WORLD 

kept  alive  the  faith  of  those  who  wanted  no  monarchies 
in  the  New  World.  Among  his  confederates  was  Por- 
firio  Diaz,  later  to  become  the  ruler  of  the  land. 

Though  we  cannot  go  into  the  details  of  the  three 
years  of  Maximilian's  innocuous  rule,  we  must  say 
this  much — that  the  exiled  Juarez,  by  his  wise  patriot- 
ism, used  the  unlawful  exploits  of  the  French  to  unite 
the  people  of  Mexico  as  they  had  never  been  united 
before.  In  fact  the  schemings  of  Napoleon  III  pre- 
sented just  the  kind  of  an  opportunity  that  was  needed, 
and  the  character  and  prestige  of  Juarez  supplied  the 
medium  that  was  necessary  to  take  advantage  of  that 
opportunity.  Hence  after  the  firing  squad  had  done 
its  work  with  the  poor  Maximilian,  Juarez  returned 
in  power  to  the  capital  and  the  land  was  united  under 
a  president  whom  all  respected.  Those  whom  the 
Gods  love  die  young,  though,  and  the  noble  Indian 
died  within  a  few  years — he  was  the  only  president 
who  has  died  a  natural  death  while  occupying  the 
office ! 

So  much  for  Benito  Juarez.  As  has  been  said  of 
him — ''We  search  in  vain  for  a  more  wonderful  ex- 
ample of  human  greatness  and  success — a  poor,  ignor- 
ant Indian  boy,  emerging  from  the  wild  mountains 
of  Oaxaca  to  link  his  name  to  some  of  the  most 
radical  reforms  the  American  continent  has  ever  wit- 
nessed," and  we  shall  also  search  in  vain  for  a  better 
type  of  patriot  or  a  better  sign  that  Mexico  has  within 
her  the  seeds  that  make  for  greatness.  When  we 
remember  that  of  the  fifteen  millions  of  Mexicans  to- 
day some  5,700,000  are  pure  Indians,  and  when  we 
read  of  the  splendid  things  that  came  from  the  Za- 
poteca  stock,  we  can  with  confidence,  even  in  the  midst 
of  these  many  present  alarms,  look  upon  the  future. 

Following  Juarez  came  Porfirio  Diaz,  President  of 
the  Republic  from  May  5,  1877  to  1911.  Of  the  epoch 
of  Diaz  one  can  only  say  that  it  presents  a  parable 


TWO   HUGE  REPUBLICS  183 

which  all  men  should  read,  and  especially  the  people 
of  these  United  States. 

As  we  can  well  imagine,  the  new  president  found, 
on  assuming  the  reins  of  authority,  that  before  him 
was  a  protean  task.  The  people  whom  he  was  chosen 
to  serve  were  poor  and  hungry,  and  all  but  worn  out 
by  a  half  century  of  discord.  No  railroads,  worthy 
of  the  name,  had  been  built,  and  travel  by  means  of 
diligence  or  horseback  was  dangerous  by  reason  of 
the  multitude  of  brigands  who  roamed  about  the  coun- 
try. The  nation's  resources  were  in  desperate  condi- 
tion. In  the  midst  of  possible  plenty  starvation 
reigned !  How  was  the  land  to  be  raised  from  'the 
ashes,  how  were  plenty  and  health  to  be  established? 
Such  were  the  questions  which  faced  Diaz,  and  the 
way  in  which  he  answered  them  provide  us  with  much 
food  for  thought. 

Basing  his  faith  in  that  old,  old  theory  that  a  people's 
life  consists  *'in  the  abundance  of  things  that  they 
have,"  Diaz  concentrated  from  the  first  on  the  material 
side  of  life.  He  built  railroads  and  harbors,  and  estab- 
lished postal  and  telegraph  systems,  and  encouraged 
industries  and  the  opening  of  mines.  He  established 
a  rural  police  who  made  all  districts  safe,  he  beauti- 
fied and  drained  the  cities,  and  enlarged  the  irrigation 
system,  and  best  of  all,  in  the  minds  of  Europeans, 
he  put  the  financial  condition  of  the  country  in  such 
a  solid  condition  that  Mexico's  credit  was  unquestioned. 
By  1905,  men  were  saying,  "Diaz  the  Great,"  and 
"Mexico  the  model  Latin  American  Republic." 

It  is  a  very  hard  not  to  quote  scripture,  or  at  least 
Shakespeare,  at  this  point.  As  we  read  of  the  terrible 
desolation  which  now  broods  over  Mexico;  of  the 
hungry  multitudes,  of  its  blood-soaked  soil,  of  its 
utterly  vanished  credit,  of  its  ruined  bridges  and  de- 
stroyed railroads  and  vanished  crops  and  shut  down 
mines, — as  we  read  today  of  a  situation  altogether 


184  THE   NEW   WORLD 

similar  to  that  which  existed  when  Diaz  began  to  rule ; 
and  as  we  realize  that  this  abominable  desolation  has 
been  brought  to  pass  within  four  short  years,  we  echo 
the  cry  of  the  psalmists  and  prophets  and  political 
philosophers  of  all  ages — a  man's  and  a  nation's  life 
consisteth  not  in  abundance  of  things.^ 

But  let  us  turn  from  this  discussion  of  the  past  to 
some  facts  about  the  land  and  the  people.  To  begin 
with,  geographically  Mexico  is  in  a  very  important 
place.  With  the  opening  up  of  the  Pacific  she  be- 
comes a  meeting-point  for  the  orient  and  Occident. 
Moreover,  this  meeting-point  is  blessed  with  superior 
climatic  advantages.  Practically  half  of  the  Republic 
has  an  elevation  of  5,000  feet,  and  a  good  portion  of 
what  remains  is  2,000  feet  above  the  sea.  In  addition 
to  these  advantages,  Mexico  is  a  land  of  great  potential 
wealth.  Though  between  1522  and  1879  her  silver 
mines  were  worked  to  the  extent  of  3,725,000,000  dol- 
lars, the  amount  of  the  precious  metal  remaining  is 
vast.  Then,  there  are  great  agricultural  possibilities 
to  be  developed,  so  that  withal,  nature  has  laid  founda- 
tions for  a  great  and  powerful  state. 

As  to  the  people  themselves,  as  has  already  been 
indicated,  a  goodly  proportion,  thirty-eight  per  cent., 
are  pure  Indians.  They  are  divided  up  into  about 
fifty  aboriginal  tribes  in  various  stages  of  civilization 
and  savagery,  and  speaking  many  different  languages. 
So  great  is  the  "dispersion  of  tongues,"  that  often- 
times one  will  see,  sitting  side  by  side  in  a  market-place, 
five  or  six  women  who  are  unable  to  speak  to  each 
other  because  of  the  differences  in  their  dialects. 

Of  these  Indians  we  hear  many  picturesque  but 

*  It  would  not  be  fair  to  omit  mention  of  the  fact  that  Diaz  did 
many  things  for  the  improvement  of  the  lot  of  the  masses.  He  pro- 
moted public  education,  insisted  on  freedom  of  worship,  suppressed 
brigandage,  and  theoretically  abolished  peonage.  Naturally  there  is 
much  disagreement  about  his  character.  Many  hold  that  only  with 
an  iron  hand  couid  Mexico  be  ruled  at  all,  and  that  Diaz  did  as  well 
as  any  man  could    in   the  face  of   the  powerful  landed  interests. 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  185 

more  pathetic  stories.  They  are  poor  and  dejected, 
but  not  necessarily  thriftless  and  improvident.  To  all 
appearances  they  are  hopeless  material,  but  we  must 
consider,  as  Bishop  Aves  writes,  "the  true  conditions 
and  the  dark  logic  of  history  that  traces  these  people 
to  their  present  helpless  state ;  that  since  the  Spanish 
Conquest,  which  drove  them  from  their  fertile  val- 
leys, they  have  passed  through  slavery,  serfdom,  and 
peonage  into  their  present  state  of  semi-feudalism; 
that  they  have  ever  been  placed  at  the  brunt  of  inter- 
necine wars,  playing  the  pawn  in  the  endless  game 
of  political  contention;  that  they  have  been  kept  in 
ignorance  as  well  as  penury ;  that  in  their  present  semi- 
feudal  state  they  must  needs  belong  more  or  less 
to  the  great  landed  estates  on  which  they  work  and 
to  which  they  are  commonly  in  hopeless  debt;  that 
they  have  nothing  with  which  to  be  'provident,'  no 
opportunity  to  'thrive,'  and  no  hope  to  inspire  ambi- 
tion; that  their  only  independence  is  the  meager  and 
precarious  foothold  on  life  that  the  rocky  clearing  on 
the  mountainside  will  afford  them." 

Such  a  picture  would  not  apply  to  all  the  Mexican 
Indians,  those  living  in  the  lowlands,  where  vegeta- 
tion is  abundant  having  at  least  plenty  to  eat  and  escap- 
ing such  suffering  as  is  inflicted  by  the  cold  of  the 
highlands.  Speaking  of  the  climate  in  which  the 
Indians  of  the  Tierra  Frio  live,  Bishop  Aves  writes : 

The  typical  mountain  home  means  a  stone  jacal  of  one  or 
two  rooms,  with  dirt  floor,  windowless,  carpetless,  with  neither 
stove  nor  bed.  The  place  for  resting,  eating,  and  sleeping 
is  the  ground;  and  at  an  altitude  of  eight  thousand  to  ten 
thousand  feet  it  is  generally  cold. 

Those  who  have  experienced  the  discomfort  common 
to  all  southern  lands,  because  of  the  fact  that  they 
seldom  make  preparation  against  winter's  cold,  can 
well  appreciate  how  miserable  the  huts  of  the  Indians 
must  be. 


186  THE   NEW   WORLD 

The  life  which  these  people  lead  is  very  simple. 

At  night  [to  quote  Bishop  Aves  again],  when  the  children 
have  brought  home  the  little  flock  of  goats  and  the  poultry 
from  the  day's  herding,  filled  the  waterpots  from  the  distant 
stream,  and  ground  the  daily  supply  of  corn,  when  the  father 
has  returned  from  his  day's  work  on  the  neighboring  hacienda 
(where  he  has  earned  two  reals,  12^  cents),  the  supper  of 
corn  calces,  which  the  mother  is  baking  on  the  heap  of  stones, 
is  eaten  in  silence,  smoke,  and  semi-darkness,  and  bedtime 
has  come.  There  is  no  need  of  light,  for  there  is  neither 
book  nor  paper  in  the  hut.  Outside  among  the  rocks  and 
cacti  (which  furnishes  the  only  fruit  that  grows)  is  a  little 
patch,  two  or  three  acres,  perhaps,  of  corn  for  winter  use. 
Let  that  little  harvest  come  to  grief  and_  deprive  the  family 
of  the  father's  shilling  wage,  and  it  is  plain  to  see  what  must 
speedily  follow.  But  the  Mexican  Indians  are  both  stoical 
and  proud.  They  are  inured  to  the  hard  life  they  live;  and 
it  must  be  severe  suffering  that  will  compel  them  to  complain 
or  ask  for  help.  It  should  be  added  that  in  these  last  dis- 
astrous years,  many  a  little  patch  of  corn  has  been  destroyed, 
so  that  starvation  is  staring  thousands  upon  thousands  of 
Indians  in  the  face. 

In  addition  to  the  Indians  there  are  the  Mestizos, 
who  may  be  looked  upon  as  the  typical  Mexicans  of  to- 
day. They  form  somewhere  in  the  neighborhood  of 
forty-three  per  cent,  of  the  population.^  They  are  a 
picturesque  people,  generally  poor  and  ignorant,  and 
yet  possessed  withal  of  excellent  traits  which  must 
develop  as  time  goes  on.  They  form  a  strong  backbone 
of  the  country,  though  the  conditions  under  which  they 
live,  like  those  of  the  Indians,  are  but  little  removed 
from  serfdom. 

This  brings  us  to  the  point  at  which  we  must  touch 
upon  Mexico's  two  great  problems — education  and  land 
ownership.  Something  like  eighty-seven  per  cent,  of 
the  population  can  neither  read  nor  write,  and  the 
shadow  of  this  darkens  almost  every  avenue. 

The  education  of  the  lower  classes  proceeds  but  slowly 
[writes  Enock],  and  at  present  less  than  thirteen  per  cent,  of 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  187 

the  entire  population  can  read  and  write.  It  is  to  be  recol- 
lected, however,  that  the  great  bulk  of  the  population  consists 
of  peons  and  Indians,  and  the  conditions  of  the  life  of  these 
render  the  question  of  education  among  them  often  impossible. 
Knowledge  cannot  but  slowly  unfold  for  the  indigenous 
peoples  of  Spanish  America,  weighed  down  as  they  are  by 
conditions  of  race,  caste,  and  inheritage,  and  imposed  social 
burdens. 

The  second  problem  is  that  of  land  ownership.  As 
has  already  been  said,  the  Indians  and  the  Mestizos 
live  in  a  semi-feudal  condition.  This  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  though  the  Aztecs  started  Mexico  in  the  right 
direction  and  possessed  an  excellent  system  of  in- 
dividual land  tenure,  such  things  were  done  away  with 
by  their  unwise  successors.  Today,  as  a  result  of  out- 
rageous concessions  to  this  company  and  to  that,  and 
grants  to  this  individual  and  to  that,  the  ownership 
of  the  land  has  been  absorbed  by  a  comparatively  small 
number  of  individuals.  Such  vast  landed  estates  as 
one  finds  in  Mexico  are  unknown  anywhere  else.' 
In  the  State  of  Chihuahua,  for  example^  there  is  a 
single  estate  of  over  fifteen  million  acres  belonging  to 
the  Terrazas  family.  In  the  State  of  Morelos,  a  small 
state  in  the  south  of  Mexico,  twelve  proprietors  own 
nine-tenths  of  the  mining  property.  In  the  State  of 
Yucatan,  the  greater  portion  of  the  land  is  owned 
by  thirty  men;  and  the  territory  of  Quintana  Roo, 
twice  as  large  as  Massachusetts,  has  been  assigned  to 
the  eight  companies  that  were  willing  to  pay  high 
enough  for  franchises.^ 

An  attempt,  regarded  by  many  as  insincere,  was 
initiated  before  the  present  revolution  to  solve  this 
problem,  but  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  large  owner 
regards  it  almost  as  a  matter  of  honor  not  to  part  with 
any  of  his  estates,  and  the  further  fact  that  the  popu- 
lation centers  around  these  haciendas,   it  is  not  an 

*  Turner,  Barbarous  Mexico,  p.  126  ff.  If  the  reader  desires  to  find 
a  bitter  denunciation  of  Diaz  and  his  system,  he  should  read  this  book. 


188  THE   NEW  WORLD 

easy  thing  to  do.  The  best  agricultural  and  mineral 
lands  have  been  thus  pre-empted,  and  those  which  are 
open  to  colonists  are  not  very  desirable,  even  though 
they  can  be  acquired  by  going  through  the  simple 
formula  of  "denouncement,''  which  entails  certain 
legal  formalities  and  the  annual  payment  of  a  small 
tax. 

It  is  on  these  lands  that  the  bulk  of  the  population 
live  in  what  Bishop  Aves  terms,  "a  semi-feudal  con- 
dition.'* Generally  speaking,  they  are  there  upon 
sufferance.  They  do  not  have  to  work,  but  if  they 
don't,  their  landlords,  discovering  that  the  soil  is  not 
being  developed,  can  with  good  excuse  bring  pressure 
to  bear;  which  pressure  of  course  cannot  be  resisted 
unless  the  tenant  is  prepared  to  vacate.  When  a  well- 
to-do  man  rents  a  piece  of  land  he  has  a  chance,  but  a 
poor  man  to  whom  moving  is  practically  impossible  has 
no  chance, — he  is  virtually  a  serf. 

The  next  class  of  people  to  be  considered  is  that 
termed  the  "obreros,"  or  working  class  of  the  cities. 
Among  them  life  is  very  much  like  that  which  one 
encounters  in  Spain,  and  among  them,  it  may  be  added, 
our  Church  does  most  of  its  work  in  the  City  of 
Mexico.  They  are  the  shopkeepers,  the  stenographers, 
the  bookkeepers,  and  the  salesmen  and  saleswomen. 

Lastly  comes  the  upper  class,  which  like  the  upper 
class  in  our  own  country  is  "upper"  only  in  things 
material.  Some  estimate  that  about  seventy-five  per 
cent,  of  them  are  agnostic.  They  are  well  educated, 
and  like  all  southern  peoples  are  fond  of  display  and 
punctiliosity.  In  appearance  they  differ  little  from 
Europeans.  "The  Mexico  gentleman,'*  writes  Enock, 
"is  courteous  and  punctilious  and  gives  much  attention 
to  dress  and  matters  of  ceremony,  after  the  general 
manner  of  the  Spanish  American,  and  the  frock  coat 
and  silk  hat  form  his  indispensable  exterior  whenever 
possible.    His  courtesy  pervades  his  business  relations 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  189 

generally  as  well  as  social  affairs ;  indeed  this  pleasing 
quality  permeates  the  whole  social  regime  from  the 
highest  official  or  wealthy  citizen,  down  to  the  poorest 
peon  or  Indian  laborer.  The  distinction  between  this 
class  and  the  poor  is  very  sharp  and  the  high  silk  hat 
and  frock  coat  form  a  striking  contrast  to  the  half- 
naked  and  sandaled  peon  in  the  plazas  and  streets 
of  the  cities.  Similarly  does  the  caballero  or  horse- 
man on  caparisoned  steed  spur  the  dust  on  the  country 
roads  over  which  the  humble  cotton-clad  Indian 
laborer  slinks  to  his  toil." 

THE    CHURCH    IN    MEXICO 

The  story  of  the  Church  in  Mexico  falls  into  three 
distinct  periods.  The  first  from  its  inception  to  the 
consecration  of  its  first  Bishop ;  the  second  from  Dr. 
Riley's  consecration  to  the  consecration  of  Bishop 
Aves;  and  the  third  from  Bishop  Aves'  consecration 
to  the  present  day. 

As  a  result  of  the  political  teachings  and  influence 
of  Benito  Juarez,  Mexicans  in  great  number  had  begun 
thinking  along  new  lines.  As  had  happened  before 
elsewhere,  for  example  in  the  Church  of  England  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  the  Church  in  Mexico  had  for- 
gotten much  about  the  fundamentals  of  Christian  prac- 
tice. Its  prodigious  wealth  had  all  but  ruined  it.  It 
thought  it  was  rich  and  knew  not  that  it  was  hungry 
and  blind  and  naked.  Its  activities  w^ere  largely  politi- 
cal and  financial,  and  like  organizations  in  our  own 
land  whose  chief  concern  is  money,  it  was  "conserva- 
tive" a  routrance. 

Perhaps  the  most  unfortunate  thing  about  this  wealth 
was  that  it  was  largely  invested  in  land.  The  revolu- 
tion fostered  by  Juarez  reached  its  climax  when  the 
Reform  Laws  of  1859  were  passed.  One  of  the  most 
striking  of  these  was  that  by  which  the  property  of 


190  THE   NEW   WORLD 

the  Church  was  confiscated  and  nationalized,  and  com- 
plete  religious    freedom   proclaimed. 

It  happened  that  the  movement  for  which  Juarez 
stood  was  accelerated  by  the  fact  that  when  Maxi- 
milian and  his  French  allies  appeared  upon  the  scene 
they  pronounced  in  favor  of  the  old  system.  It  was 
only  after  the  Austrian  discovered  that  the  liberal 
propaganda  had  gained  too  much  headway  to  be 
trifled  with  that  he  came  out  in  favor  of  religious 
toleration.  In  the  meantime,  however,  the  cause  of 
nationalism  and  religious  freedom  had  become  asso- 
ciated in  the  minds  of  the  masses,  greatly  to  the  ad- 
vantage of  the  latter. 

We  are  not  surprised  to  discover,  then,  that  as  a 
result  of  these  events  there  began  among  the  more 
thoughtful  of  the  clergy  a  strong  movement  for  church 
reform.  According  to  a  correspondent  in  the  Spirit 
of  Missions,  in  July,  1864,  "at  least  150  Mexican 
priests  .  .  .  are  desirous  of  a  thorough  reform  of 
the  Church.  Some  of  them  are  already  earnestly  labor- 
ing to  make  their  church  what  they  would  call  the  'Re- 
formed Church  of  Mexico.' " 

Some  of  these  priests  gathered  together  in  groups  and 
corresponded  with  the  Rev.  Angel  Herrerros  de  Mora, 
a  clergyman  of  our  Church,  in  New  York.  They  de- 
clared to  Mr.  Mora,  according  to  a  report  of  the  For- 
eign Committee  of  the  Board  of  Missions,  "their  will- 
ingness to  receive  such  instruction  and  all  the  aid  we 
can  give  them  in  arriving  at  a  full  knowledge  of  the 
truth  themselves  and  of  imparting  it  to  others."  Surely, 
the  editor  adds,  "we  shall  greatly  fail  in  our  duty  if  we 
leave  these  men  to  themselves,  or  cause  them  through 
our  neglect  to  turn  for  aid  to  those  who,  however  much 
good  they  may  do  them,  will  not  enable  them  to  make 
the  Reformed  Church  of  Mexico  a  Church  which  shall 
combine  evangelical  truth  with  apostolic  order."  ^ 

^Spirit  of  Missions,  Vol.  XXIX,  pp.  177.  178. 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  191 

This  statement  makes  clear  the  exact  reason  for 
the  beginning  of  our  work  in  Mexico.  It  coincides 
precisely  with  a  statement  made  recently  by  the  Bishop 
of  Porto  Rico  to  the  effect  that  as  he  sees  it,  our  reason 
for  being  in  Latin  lands,  ecclesiastically  speaking,  is 
either  to  build  up  true  Catholicity,  or  to  compel  the 
Latin  branch  of  the  Church  to  return  of  its  own  initia- 
tive to  true  Catholicity,  which,  as  the  Bishop  put  it, 
"amounts  to  the  same  thing  in  the  end." 

In  order  to  ascertain  exactly  what  had  best  be  done, 
the  Foreign  Committee  sent  the  Rev.  E.  J.  Nicholson 
to  Mexico,  in  1864,  on  a  tour  of  observation.  "He 
not  only  surveyed  the  ground,"  we  are  told,  "but  has 
really  inaugurated  our  Church  service  there ;  and  being 
obliged  to  return  here  for  conference  with  the  Foreign 
Committee,  has  left  his  mission  in  charge  of  one  of 
the  priests  who  have  joined  it, — the  Rev.  Father 
Aguilar — whose  accomplishments  and  devotion  are 
well  spoken  of  by  those  in  Mexico  who  favor  a  re- 
formation in  the  Church.  Father  Aguilar  represents 
a  multitude  of  devout  priests  and  good  people  in  the 
States  of  Mexico." 

Such,  in  a  very  brief  way,  was  the  beginning  of 
"La  Sociedad  Catolica  Apostolica  Mexicana,"  later 
named,  "La  Iglesia  de  Jesus"  by  Mr.  Aguas.  The 
story  of  the  years  that  follow  is  not  always  joyful, 
but  it  is  full  of  significance  and  contains  a  mighty 
moral.  The  way  in  which  the  flamboyant  beginnings 
almost  died  out  reminds  us  that  big  beginnings  are  not 
always  a  proof  of  power.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
moralizer  is  tempted  to  add,  it  would  be  hard  to  find 
anywhere  in  the  history  of  the  Church  an  instance 
wherein  a  whirlwind  beginning,  such  as  was  seen  in 
Mexico,  was  followed  by  immediate  prosperity. 

The  Rev.  H.  Chauncey  Riley,  a  man  of  large  in- 
dependent fortune,  who  had  been  educated  in  Spain, 
was  rector  of  a  Spanish  American  congregation  in  the 


192  THE  NEW  WORLD 

city  of  New  York.  He  had  for  some  time  been  tire- 
less in  his  efforts  to  promote  the  interests  of  a  group 
of  some  three  thousand  ''evangehcal  Christians"  in 
the  south  of  Spain,  and  when  news  reached  him  of 
the  events  in  Mexico,  his  sympathy  was  at  once 
aroused.  In  1869,  under  the  auspices  of  the  "Ameri- 
can and  Foreign  Christian  Union," — a  New  York  So- 
ciety composed  of  members  of  various  religious  bodies 
—he  went  to  the  City  of  Mexico  and  offered  his  ser- 
vices to  the  reformers.  Mr.  Aguilar,  their  first  leader 
having  died,  Riley  was  accepted  gladly  as  his  suc- 
cessor. 

On  his  arrival,  Mr.  Riley  had  been  able  to  secure 
from  the  government  the  church  of  San  Jose  de 
Gracia,  one  of  the  conventual  churches  which  had 
been  sequestrated  by  the  Reform  Laws  of  '59.  One 
can  well  imagine  that  great  excitement  reigned  when  it 
was  announced  that  San  Jose  was  to  be  opened  by  the 
reformers,  and  that  the  Roman  clergy  had  many 
conferences  as  to  how  they  could  best  prevent  what 
would  be  to  them  a  sacrilege.  Wisdom  prevailed  in 
these  conferences,  we  are  glad  to  learn,  and  it  was  de- 
cided not  to  resort  to  violence.  Instead  they  determined 
to  trust  to  the  eloquence  and  persuasive  power  of  a 
learned  theologian,  the  rector  of  one  of  their  large 
churches,  the  Rev.  Manuel  Aguas — a  Dominican  Friar. 

In  order  to  do  the  thing  thoroughly,  and  to  prepare 
a  diatribe  against  the  reformers  which  would  be  ir- 
resistible, Mr.  Aguas  began  a  serious  study  of  the 
ecclesiastical  position  of  Mr.  Riley  and  his  Anglican 
Church.  But  alas!  for  those  who  had  pinned  their 
faith  on  the  Dominican  rector.  The  more  he  read,  the 
more  thinking  did  he  do,  until,  to  the  consternation 
and  amazement  of  all  the  city,  he  announced  that  he 
had  discovered  that  the  reformers  were  not  heretics 
at  all,  and  that  he  himself,  in  recognition  of  this  would 
preach  the  sermon  on  the  occasion  of  the  opening  of 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  193 

the  church.  One  need  not  add  that  excitement  ran 
high  and  that  the  opening-  service  was  an  occasion  of 
much  importance.  Contrary  to  the  expectations  of 
many,  it  passed  ofiF  quietly,  and  from  that  time  until 
1872  Mr.  Aguas  labored  incessantly  and  quietly  for 
the  cause  of  true  CathoHcity. 

The  same  difficulty  which  arose  in  other  Latin  dis- 
tricts soon  developed  in  Mexico.  A  Church  without 
a  bishop  was  found  to  be  like  a  body  without  a  head. 
Something  had  to  be  done.  In  this  extremity  the 
clergy  in  Mexico  senl:  a  petition  to  the  General  Con- 
vention which  met  in  New  York  in  1874,  asking  that 
a  bishop  be  sent  them  under  conditions  similar  to 
those  under  which  one  had  been  sent  to  Haiti.  The 
situation,  however,  was  too  precarious  for  instant 
action,  and  the  House  of  Bishops  appointed  a  Com- 
mission of  seven  bishops  to  study  the  question. 

The  first  meeting  of  this  body  decided  that  the  only 
thing  to  do  was  to  send  some  competent  person  to  the 
field,  and  accordingly  asked  Bishop  Lee  of  Delaware, 
their  chairman,  to  make  a  tour  of  inspection.  Accom- 
panied by  Dr.  Heman  Dyer  of  New  York  he  went  in 
1875  and  reported  that  episcopal  supervision  was 
needed  at  once.  So  many  people  had  been  carried 
away  by  the  enthusiasm  of  the  moment  that  a  steady- 
ing hand  was  necessary.  Moreover,  men  were  clamor- 
ing for  ordination,  and  there  was  no  one  either  to  ad- 
vise or  ordain  them.  Among  those  desiring  ordina- 
tion at  this  time  he  felt  constrained  to  accept  several 
at  once,  and  ordained  them  to  the  diaconate.  "As  it 
was  uncertain,"  in  the  language  of  his  report,  "when 
another  opportunity  would  be  presented,  elevation  to 
the  presbyterate  followed  a  few  days  afterward." 
These  were  the  first  episcopal  acts  in  Mexico  of  a 
bishop  of  the  American  Church. 

As  an  evidence  of  the  extent  of  the  movement  in 
these  early  days,  Bishop  Lee  reported  upon  his  re- 


194  THE   NEW   WORLD 

turn  that  he  had  found  some  fifty  congregations  made 
up  of  over  six  thousand  people. 

Despite  this  evidence  of  progress  the  Board  of  Mis- 
sions did  not  feel  justified  in  taking  the  work  under 
its  direction.  It  was  glad  though  to  see  formed,  under 
the  auspices  of  the  committee  of  seven  bishops,  "The 
League  in  Aid  of  the  Mexican  Branch  of  the  Church." 
This  League  held  its  organization  meeting  in  Calvary 
Church,  New  York,  on  the  22d  of  March,  1876.^ 
Within  a  short  space  of  time  branches  were  formed 
in  thirteen  dioceses,  and  contributions  began  to  pour  in. 
It  should  be  interjected,  to  make  it  doubly  clear,  that  as 
yet  the  Church  did  not  dare  "touch"  the  Mexican 
movement,  that  though  the  committee  worked  in  har- 
mony with  the  Foreign  Committee  of  the  Board,  great 
care  was  taken  to  make  it  plain  that  it  was  not  Board 
work.  For  example,  in  their  notices  they  state  that, 
"Persons  contributing  to  the  work  of  this  'League* 
through  the  Foreign  Committee  should  always  desig- 
nate their  gifts  as  'for  Mexico,'  and  they  should  under- 
stand that  in  thus  contributing  to  it  they  do  not  aid 
the  work  of  the  Foreign  Committee,  but  only  of  'The 
League  in  Aid  of  the  Mexican  Branch  of  the 
Church.' "  2 

Meantime,  though  the  League  was  the  mainstay  of 
the  mission,  the  American  Church  Missionary  Society 
had  added  Mexico  to  its  sphere  of  influence.  This 
had  been  done  in  1872.  Its  prestige,  plus  the  efforts 
of  the  League  had  by  ^77  succeeded  in  arousing  a 
great  amount  of  interest,  specially  in  the  eastern 
states.  Nor  was  it  difficult  to  do  this,  since  the  re- 
ports from  the  field  were  fairly  amazing.  The  writer 
can  well  remember  being  told  by  those  who  were  in 
the  thick  of  it  that  at  one  time  many  people  thought 
that  all  of   Mexico  was  about  to  desert  Rome   for 

*  A  full  account  of  this  will  be  found  in  Vol.  XLII  of  the  Spirit  of 

Missions,  p.   609   ff. 

2  spirit  of  Missions,  Vol.  XLII,  p.  609. 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  195 

Canterbury.  No  wonder  they  thought  so,  when  word 
came  from  Mr.  Riley  that  in  order  to  shelter  the 
crowds  who  came  to  the  services,  he  had  had  to  buy 
the  San  Francisco  church, — a  building  of  vast  seat- 
ing capacity  which  had  been  among  the  many  seques- 
trated by  the  Reform  Laws.^ 

At  length,  pressure  from  within  and  without  com- 
pelled the  Board  to  desert  its  policy  of  caution.  The 
movement  looked  so  big  that  it  was  unbelievable  that 
anything  but  prosperity  lay  ahead.  Accordingly  at  a 
meeting  of  the  Foreign  Committee  held  on  December 
11,  1877,  the  following  Resolution  was  adopted: 

Resolved:  That  it  be  recommended  to  the  Board  of  Man- 
agers to  assume  for  the  future  the  charge  and  responsibihty 
of  the  work  in  Mexico  hitherto  carried  on  by  the  American 
Church  Missionary  Society;  and  to  authorize  the  Foreign 
Committee  to  receive  and  disburse  contributions  from  the 
Church  for  the  aid  of  the  Mexican  Branch  of  the  Cathohc 
Church  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

At  a  subsequent  meeting  of  the  Board,  held  in  New 
York  in  October,  this  resolution  was  adopted  and  ap- 
propriations made  to  the  extent  of  $14,000  a  year. 

But  the  Church  in  Mexico  was  still  without  a  bishop. 
It  will  be  remembered  a  request  for  one  had  been 
made  to  the  House  of  Bishops  in  1874,  and  this  re- 
quest had  been  referred  to  the  commission  of  seven 
bishops.  The  Mexicans,  unwilling  to  lose  any  time, 
in  the  meanwhile  had  proceeded  to  an  election.  At 
first  they  elected  Dr.  Riley  as  Bishop  of  the  Metro- 
polis and  the  Rev.  P.  G.  Hernandez  for  the  regions 
beyond  the  city.  Subsequently,  owing  to  the  request 
of  Dr.  Riley,  they  changed  this  and  elected  him  Bishop 
of  the  Valley  of  Mexico  and  Mr.  Hernandez  Bishop 
of  Cuemavaca,  and  a  young  man  named  Valdespino 

*  It  is  a  melancholy  fact  that  this  large  church  was  sold  a  few  years 
later  for  a  song.  The  property  it  occupied  is  now  worth  over  a 
million    dollars. 


196  THE  NEW  WORLD 

Bishop  of  the  City  of  Mexico.  These  things  were 
done  on  the  9th  of  November,  1878. 

At  the  same  time  a  constitution  "for  the  Mexican 
Branch  of  the  Church  Catholic  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ"  was  drawn  up  and  submitted  to  the  House 
of  Bishops,  and  along  with  it  was  a  report  to  the 
effect  that  in  the  three  proposed  dioceses  there  were 
seventy-one  congregations  with  3,500  members  and 
more  worshipers.  The  committee  examined  all  of 
these  reports  carefully  and  finally  recommended  that 
Dr.  Riley  be  consecrated  Bishop  of  the  Valley  of 
Mexico.  This  was  done  on  St.  John  the  Baptist's 
Day,  June  24,  1879,  in  Trinity  Church,  Pittsburgh, 
Pa.^ 

With  the  consecration  of  Dr.  Riley,  the  first  period 
in  the  history  of  the  young  Church  came  to  an  end. 


SECOND  PERIOD 

The  "Church  of  Jesus"  suffered  in  many  ways 
throughout  the  second  period  from  the  haste  to  which 
the  exigencies  of  the  situation  had  driven  its  leaders 
during  the  first  period.  More  specially  is  this  true 
of  the  years  between  1879  and  1885.  So  great 
had  been  the  demand  for  his  ministrations,  and 
so  multitudinous  the  requests  for  assistan<:e,  that, 
in  his  endeavor  to  help  everybody,  Bishop  Riley  al- 
lowed matters  to  get  at  sixes  and  sevens.  To  be  per- 
fectly fair  to  him  we  must  say  that  he  was  no  admin- 
istrator and  was  confronted  by  a  situation  which 
required  the  most  skilful  kind  of  management. 

To  make  a  long  story  short,  he  spent  money  right 
and  left  without  keeping  accurate  accounts.  When 
asked  for  a  statement  of  expenditures  he  had  neither 
vouchers  nor  receipts.     His  enemies — and  who  does 

»  spirit  of  Missions,  Vol.  XLIV,  p.  309  ff. 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  197 

not  make  them — took  advantage  of  this  and  accused 
him  of  misappropriation,  but  the  Mexican  Committee 
of  the  House  of  Bishops  made  a  very  thorough  ex- 
amination and  completely  exonerated  him  from  any 
such  charges.  When  the  reader  learns  that  he  labored 
for  ten  years  v^ithout  salary,  and  gave  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  one  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  dollars  out 
of  his  own  pocket  to  the  work,  he  will  realize  that 
whatever  errors  Dr.  Riley  made  were  the  result  of 
that  kind  of  inefficiency  which  sometimes  accompanies 
untamed  enthusiasm. 

In  addition  to  these  financial  troubles  he  had  al- 
lowed a  schism  to  develop.  Two  bodies,  one  calling 
itself  The  Ciierpo  Ecclesiastico,  and  the  other  'The 
Independent  Mexican  Church,"  came  into  existence. 
The  first  was  made  up  of  a  large  majority  of  the 
Church  outside  of  the  City  of  Mexico;  the  second  had 
for  its  followers,  generally  speaking,  those  in  the  city. 
Such  was  the  condition  when,  in  response  to  a  request 
from  the  committee  of  seven,  Bishop  Riley  resigned 
in  April,  1884. 

Though  his  removal  solved  one  of  the  Board^s  prob- 
lems, it  was  still  confronted  by  the  schism.  The 
Cuerpo  Ecclesiastico  wished  to  be  received  as  a  mis- 
sionary jurisdiction ;  the  Independent  Church  was 
violently  opposed  to  such  a  procedure.  What  was  to 
be  done?  Should  the  petition  of  the  majority  be 
granted,  and  if  so  under  what  terms? 

A  solution  was  reached  at  the  General  Convention 
of  1886,  when,  in  response  to  a  second  and  very  urgent 
request,  the  House  of  Bishops  decided  to  acknowledge 
the  Ciierpo  Ecclesiastico  as  the  proper  authority  in 
Mexico;  following  which,  the  Board  of  Missions, 
though  unable  to  make  appropriations,  appointed  a 
presbyter,  the  Rev.  W.  B.  Gordon,  under  the  nomina- 
tion of  the  Presiding  Bishop,  to  the  rather  anomalous 
position  of  what  we  might  call  "Resident,"  in  Mexico. 


198  THE   NEW   WORLD 

Mr.  Gordon's  salary  was  guaranteed  by  the  League,  and 
his  duties  were  to  live  in  Mexico  and  guide  and  counsel 
the  local  authorities.  For  almost  six  years  he  handled 
the  delicate  situation  in  a  very  skilful  way,  and  suc- 
ceeded, before  ill  health  made  him  give  up,  in  reunit- 
ing the  Independent  Church  and  the  Cuerpo  Ecclesi- 
astic o. 

Following  Mr.  Gordon  came  the  devoted  Henry 
Forrester.  For  ten  years  this  faithful  presbyter  was 
the  practical  head  of  the  infant  Church.  He  was 
the  kind  of  a  man  that  was  needed,  and  under  his  wise, 
firm  guidance,  the  task  begun  by  Mr.  Gordon  was  com- 
pleted and  Mexico  made  ready  for  a  bishop. 

The  General  Convention  of  1904 — shortly  after  Mr. 
Forrester's  death — elected  to  the  vacant  see  the  Rev. 
Henry  D.  Aves.  The  entrance  of  Bishop  Aves  upon 
his  duties  marks  the  beginning  of  the  third  epoch. 

One  cannot  close  this  narration  of  the  second  period, 
however,  without  mentioning  the  names  of  two  de- 
voted women  to  whose  unwavering  faith,  during  the 
dark  days,  the  Church  in  Mexico  owes  more  than  it 
ever  can  repay :  Mrs.  M.  J.  Hooker,  who,  hearing  the 
call  of  the  Master,  went  down  to  Mexico  and  largely 
at  her  own  charges  founded  the  orphanage  which  has 
been  there  ever  since,  and  accomplished  great  good. 
For  many  years  she  was  spoken  of  as  the  Saint  of  the 
Mexican  Mission,  and  to  her  quiet  influence  many 
women  owe  what  they  now  know  about  the  better  and 
truer  things  of  life.  And  Mrs.  John  Clark,  who  served 
on  various  committees  year  after  year,  and  by  her 
prayers,  faith,  and  generosity  kept  afloat  undertakings 
which  must  otherwise  have  gone  down.  While  there 
were  other  notable  workers,  these  are  the  two  names 
which  one  hears  most  often  when  the  bright  side  of 
the  middle  period  is  discussed. 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  199 


THIRD   PERIOD 

In  his  first  report  to  the  Board  in  1905,  Bishop  Aves 
stated  that,  thanks  to  its  enlarged  appropriation,  work 
was  being  carried  on  in  twenty-one  Anglo-Saxon  com- 
munities,— the  largest  institution  being  Christ  Church 
in  Mexico  City,  an  English  congregation. 

'Though  mindful,"  he  wrote,  **of  the  fact  that  the 
predominating  motive  of  our  House  of  Bishops  in  send- 
ing a  bishop  into  Mexico  has  been  to  carry  the  Church's 
blessing  to  the  Anglo-American  residents  there,  I  can- 
not divest  myself  of  the  deep  sense  of  responsibility 
which  enters  in  my  representative  ministry  to  care  for 
these  'other  sheep'  in  the  wilderness ;  and  I  am  con- 
fidently hopeful  that  the  Church  will  make  speedy  pro- 
vision whereby  this  may  be  undertaken."  ^  These 
words  referred  to  the  fact  that  in  his  commission  from 
the  House  of  Bishops,  Dr.  Aves  was  specifically  in- 
formed that  he  was  appointed  to  take  charge  of  the 
Anglo-Americans  in  Mexico.  To  the  request  that  he 
take  care  of  those  "other  sheep,"  the  Church  listened 
gladly,  and  with  the  help  of  increased  appropriations 
he  speedily  undertook  to  care  for  the  ''thirty-two  or 
more  congregations"  of  natives  who  appealed  to  him 
to  be  their  chief  pastor. 

Such  was  the  situation  when  Bishop  Aves  first  went 
down.  There  was  every  reason  to  believe  that  con- 
ditions were  propitious  and  that  the  Iglesia  Catolica 
Mexicana  was  at  last  ready  to  go  forward, — President 
Diaz  had  rendered  the  land  orderly,  prosperity  was  on 
all  sides,  why  should  not  everything  flourish? 

But  those  who  were  thus  sanguine  forgot  to  reckon 
with  affairs  political,  for  Bishop  Aves  had  only  just 
started  work  when  the  revolution  of  1912  came  down 

1  First  Annual  Report  of  the  Bishop  of  the  Missionary  District  of 
Mexico,  Sptrtt  of  Mtsstons,   Vol.   LXX,   p.    197. 


200  THE   NEW   WORLD 

Upon  him  like  a  wolf  on  the  fold  and  scattered  his 
sheep  far  and  wide. 

Poor  Mexico !  One  thing  after  another  has  assailed 
it.  Dissension  ecclesiastical,  unwise  leadership,  hub- 
bub political — one  after  another  they  have  set  at 
naught  the  labors  of  the  tireless  clergy. 

Today  matters  are  at  a  standstill.  What  will  result 
from  the  punitive  expedition  against  Villa  ?  Who  can 
tell?  And  the  wise  historian  will  lay  down  his  pen 
and  pray  for,  rather  than  write  further  about,  Mexico 
and  its  Church. 


CHURCH     OF    THE    MEDIATOR.     SANTA     MARIA 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  201 


BRAZIL 

The  huge  republic  of  the  southern  continent  which 
we  now  call  Brazil  is  not  so  rich  in  romance  as  are  some 
other  Latin  lands.  Why  is  it  that  the  smaller  a  thing 
is  the  more  charming  it  seems  to  be,  while  large  things 
are  generally  prosaic?  At  all  events  if  one  had  to 
describe  Brazil  in  a  sentence  he  would  not  resort  to 
poetry  or  the  language  of  ron.ance.  Rather  would  he 
fall  back  on  some  heavy  alliteration  like:  Prodigious, 
Portentous,  Prolific,  Prosaic,  Problematical.  It  is  so 
vast,  and  its  past  is  so  unoriginal,  its  present  so  con- 
fused and  its  future  so  uncertain,  that  a  feeling  of 
bewilderment  overcomes  one  as  he  thinks  about  it. 

A  score  of  years  before  Cortez  burst  in  upon  the 
Aztecs,  a  Spaniard  named  Pinzon  had  visited  the 
mouth  of  the  Amazon.  He  was  bound  west,  however, 
and  proceeded  on  his  journey  without  setting  up  the 
banner  of  Castile  and  Leon. 

In  the  spring  of  1500,  just  a  few  months  after 
Pinzon  had  been  there,  a  Portuguese,  Pedro  Alvarez 
Cabral,  having  been  deflected  from  his  course  by  the 
Brazilian  current,  dropped  anchor  in  a  little  bay  on 
the  Brazilian  coast  which  he  thought  was  on  the  east 
coast  of  India. 

More  mindful  of  his  master's  desire  for  new  lands 
than  Pinzon,  Cabral  took  pompous  possession  of  the 
territory  in  the  name  of  the  King  of  Portugal.  Shortly 
thereafter,  having  marooned  two  of  his  crew  to  keep 
his  title  clear,  he  despatched  a  vessel  back  to  Lisbon 
with  news  of  the  achievement,  and  proceeded  with  the 
rest  of  his  fleet  to  Calicut.  Thus  it  came  to  pass  that 
Portugal  and  not  Spain  became  overlord  of  Brazil. 
This  overlordship,  it  should  be  added,  was,  after  the 
manner  of  the  times,  regularized  by  Pope  Alexander 


202  THE  NEW  WORLD 

VI.,  who  divided  the  new  world  into  two  parts  by  the 
forty-first  parallel  of  west  longitude.  To  the  Spaniards 
he  gave  all  to  the  west  of  that  line,  while  the  Portu- 
guese were  permitted  to  call  their  own  whatever  lay 
to  the  east.^ 

The  first  name  given  the  land  was  Vera  Cruz.  This 
did  not  obtain  long  though,  since  the  Europeans  in- 
sisted on  calling  it  by  the  name  of  the  chief  com- 
modity it  yielded  them, — Brazil  wood. 

The  subsequent  history  of  Brazil  can  be  divided 
into  three  parts.  The  period  of  the  colonials;  the 
period  of  the  empire ;  and  the  period  of  the  republic. 

Of  the  colonial  period  several  things  should  be  com- 
mented on  here.  In  the  first  place,  when  the  King  of 
Portugal  decided  to  make  sure  of  his  possession  of 
the  new  land,  he  divided  it  into  Capitaneas,  a  sort  of 
feudal  fief,  to  be  bestowed  upon  such  of  his  subjects 
as  would  undertake,  at  their  own  expense,  to  settle 
and  develop  the  new  country.  In  return  they  were 
made  absolute  rulers  of  their  territory.  The  whole 
coast  of  Brazil  was  in  this  way  divided  into  twelve 
sections,  150  miles  wide  and  as  deep  as  the  settlers 
cared  to  go,  and  given  over  to  adventurers, — for  better 
or  worse.  In  these  fiefs  six  permanent  settlements 
were  made,  which  in  time  were  concentrated  about  four 

1  Pope  Alexander  VI,  May  4,  1493,  issued  a  Bull  in  which  "by  the 
fullnesse  of  Apostolical  power,  doe  give  grant  and  designe  to  you, 
your  heires  and  successors,  all  the  firme  Lands  and  Hands  found,  or 
to  be  found,  discovered  or  to  be  discovered,  toward  the  West  and 
South,  drawing  a  line  from  the  Pole  Arctike  to  the  Pole  Antarctike 
(that  is  from  the  north  to  the  south),  contayning  in  this  Donation 
whatsoever  firme  Lands  and  Hands  are  found  or  to  be  found  toward 
India,  or  toward  any  other  part  whatsoever  it  be,  being  distant  from, 
or  without  the  foresaid  Line,  drawne  a  hundred  Leagues  toward  the 
West,  and  South,  from  any  of  the  Hands  which  are  commonly  called 
De  Los  Azores  and  Capo  Verde."  Quoted  from  Anderson,  Old 
Panama,  p.   503. 

Inasmuch  as  between  the  westernmost^  of  the  Azores  and  the  eastern- 
most of  the  Cape  Verde  group  there  is  a  difference  in  longitude  of 
about  10  degrees,  the  Bull's  description  was  decidedly  vague.  It  took 
the  treaty  of  Tordesillas  to  decide  that  the  line  should  be  370  leagues 
west  of  the  Cape  Verde  Islands,  or  somewhere  between  41  and  44  west 
longitude.    Fiske,  The  Discovery  of  America,  II,  p.  454  ff. 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  203 

centers,  Bahia,  Sao  Paulo,  Pemambuco,  and  Rio  de 
Janeiro.  For  many  years  the  settlements  remained 
on  the  coast,  and  even  to-day  the  Brazil  that  counts  as 
a  political  entity  is  the  table  land  of  the  Atlantic  sea- 
board between  Ceara  to  the  north  and  Rio  Grande 
do  Sul. 

In  the  expeditions  which  went  out  to  the  Capitaneas 
there  were  very  few  women,  and  nothing  is  more  re- 
markable than  the  rapidity  and  success  of  the  inter- 
marrying which  took  place  between  the  newcomers  and 
the  native  Indians.  Not  only  were  the  evil  results  of 
this,  so  often  seen,  largely  avoided,  but  the  product  has 
been  on  the  whole  most  satisfactory.^  The  general 
result  has  been  thus  summed  up  by  Denis :  "Each  race 
would  gain ;  each  race  was  warlike,  and  of  an  in- 
credibly hardy  stock ;  the  restless  adventurers  of  feudal 
Portugal  and  the  beasts  of  burden  of  the  coastal 
Indian  gave  the  race  a  physical  basis  which  should 
save  it  from  degeneration  for  many  generations  to 
come." 

Of  all  the  early  settlers  none  were  so  energetic  as 
those  who  occupied  what  is  now  called  the  State  of 
Sao  Paulo.  Some  would  have  it  that  the  history  of 
Brazil  is  the  history  of.Sao  Paulo.  The  mixture  of  the 
Portuguese  and  the  Indians  of  that  district  produced 
a  people  endowed  with  a  tremendous  ambition  and  a 
stamina  to  back  it  up.  The  Paulistas  were  the  leaders 
in  almost  everything  that  made  for  conquest  and 
progress  in  old  Brazil,  and  today  Sao  Paulo  is  the 
economic  center  of  the  country. 

During  the  colonial  period  and  up  until  1762  the 
capital  of  Brazil  was  Bahia.  That  city  and  Pernam- 
buco  were  the  ecclesiastical  and  political  centers.  The 
energy  of  the  Paulistas,  however,  at  length  turned  the 
scales,  and  we  now  find  that  southern  Brazil,  just  like 
northern  United  States  and  southern  Australia,  is  the 

*  Denis,  Brazil,  pp.  35,  36. 


204  THE  NEW  WORLD 

predominant  part  of  the  country.^  When  we  think, 
therefore,  about  Brazil  we  must  remember  that  econom- 
ically and  socially  it  presents  the  same  general  features 
as  the  United  States  turned  upside  down.  In  this 
connection  we  can  see  why,  when  Mr.  Kinsolving  and 
the  early  workers  first  went  there,  they  settled  in 
southern  Brazil, — they  wanted  to  occupy  that  portion 
where  their  influence  would  be  most  felt.  Though 
it  is  perfectly  true  that  our  work  is  only  in  a  little 
corner  of  a  vast  land,  still  that  little  corner  is  the 
dynamic  center. 

The  colonial  period  came  to  an  end  in  1807.  As 
usual  it  was  the  Napoleonic  escapade  which  turned 
things  topsy-turvy.  In  this  year,  the  Regent  of  Portu- 
gal, Dom  Joao,  flying  from  the  French  Emperor,  trans- 
ferred the  court  from  Lisbon  to  Rio  de  Janeiro.  Thus 
the  colony  was  raised  to  coordinate  rank  with  the 
mother  country  and  Brazil  became  one  of  the  nations 
of  the  world. 

The  period  of  the  empire  opened  auspiciously  and 
had  the  house  of  Braganza  provided  competent  rulers 
Brazil  might  still  be  an  empire.  Joao  and  his  son  were 
kindly,  good-natured  men, — the  latter  being  very  lib- 
eral-minded. But  that  firmness  without  which  noth- 
ing could  prosper  in  the  revolutionary  period  was  lack- 
ing. After  much  vacillation  the  people  decided  to 
follow  the  example  of  the  other  South  American 
States  and  proceeded  to  set  up  a  republic. 

The  exact  occasion  for  this  change  came  in  1889 
when  the  kindly  emperor  Dom  Pedro  announced  that 
he  was  going  to  abdicate  in  favor  of  his  daughter 
Isabel.  The  Brazilians  had  about  made  up  their  minds 
to  establish  a  Republic  so  soon  as  Pedro  should  be 
gathered  to  his  fathers,  and  the  idea  of  having  their 
plans  upset  by  the  sudden  accession  of  the  autocratic 

*  This  is  interesting  in  connection  with  Professor  Huntington's  climate 
theory,  see  page  80. 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  205 

Isabel  was  too  much  for  their  patience.  Accordingly, 
supported  by  the  republican  leagues  and  the  army,  Fon- 
seca  prepared  and  put  through  a  coup  d'etat.  The  Em- 
peror and  his  family  were  put  on  board  a  ship  bound 
for  Lisbon,  and  Brazil  was  declared  a  Federation  of 
twenty  sovereign  states. 

According  to  the  constitution  adopted  by  the  National 
Congress  on  February  24,  1891,  the  Brazilian  nation  is  con- 
stituted as  the  United  States  of  Brazil,  comprising  twenty 
States,  one  National  Territory,  and  one  Federal  District 
Each  of  the  old  provinces  forms  a  State,  administered  at 
its  own  expense  without  interference  from  the  Federal  Gov- 
ernment save  for  defence,  for  the  maintenance  of  order,  and 
for  the  execution  of  the  Federal  laws.  Fiscal  arrangements 
in  such  matters  as  import  duties,  stamps,  rates  of  postage, 
and  bank-note  circulation  belong  to  the  Union;  but  export 
duties  are  the  property  of  the  various  States. 

The  legislative  authority  is  exercised  by  the  National  Con- 
gress with  the  sanction  of  the  President  of  the  Republic. 
Congress  consists  of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  and  the  Senate, 
It  meets  annually  on  the  3rd  of  May,  without  being  con- 
voked, unless  another  day  be  fixed  by  law,  and  sits  four 
months,  but  may  be  prorogued  or  convoked  extraordinarily. 
.  .  .  The  Chamber  of  Deputies  consists  of  212  members 
elected  for  three  years  by  direct  vote  (providing  for  the 
representation  of  the  minority),  in  a  proportion  not  greater 
than  one  to  every  70,000  of  population  as  shown  by  a  decen- 
nial census,  but  so  that  no  State  will_  have  less  than  four 
representatives.  It  has  the  initiative  in  legislation  relating 
to  taxation,  and  in  proceedings  against  the  President  of  the 
Republic  and  Secretaries  of  State. 

Senators,  63  in  number,  are  chosen  by  direct  vote,  three 
for  each  State,  and  for  the  Federal  District,  for  nine  years, 
and  the  Senate  is  renewed  to  the  extent  of  one-third  every 
three  years.  The  Vice-President  of  the  Republic  is  President 
of  the  Senate. 

The  executive  authority  is  exercised  by  the  President  of 
the  Republic.  He  must  be  a  native  of  Brazil,  over  thirty-five 
years  of  age.  His  term  of  office  is  four  years,  and  he  is  not 
eligible  for  the  succeeding  term.  The  President  and  the  Vice- 
President  are  elected  by  the  people  directly,  by  an  absolute 
majority  of  votes.  .  .  .  The  President  appoints  and  dismisses 
ministers,  is  in  supreme  command  of  the  army  and  navy,  and, 
within  certain  limits,  has  the  power  to  declare  war  and  make 


206  THE  NEW  WORLD 

peace.  .  .  .  The  franchise  extends  to  all  citizens  not  under 
twenty-one  years  of  age,  duly  enrolled,  except  beggars,  "illit- 
erates," soldiers  actually  serving,  and  members  of  monastic 
orders,  etc.,  under  vows  of  obedience.^ 

The  area  of  Brazil  is  important  because  of  its  vast- 
ness.  It  contains  3,290,564  square  miles.  When  com- 
pared to  the  2,973,890  of  continental  United  States,  it 
will  be  seen  to  be  as  large  as  our  own  land  plus  extra 
New  Yorks,  New  Jerseys,  and  Pennsylvanias.  A  great 
part  of  the  territory  is  uninhabited,  the  great  states 
of  Amazonas  and  Matto  Grosso,  for  example,  with  a 
joint  area  of  1,265,122  square  miles  (over  a  third  of 
Brazil),  having  a  total  population  of  368,000.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  the  states  of  Sao  Paulo,  Rio  Grande 
do  Sul,  Minas  Geraes  and  Bahia,  with  an  area  of  about 
five  hundred  and  ninety  thousand  square  miles,  over 
nine  million  or  almost  half  of  the  nation  live.  The 
official  estimate  of  the  population  for  1913  was  24,308,- 
219.  Serious  efforts  are  made  to  increase  the  inflow 
of  immigrants,  but  as  yet  the  annual  number  has  not 
exceeded  200,000. 

The  chief  cities  of  Brazil  are  Rio  de  Janeiro  (1,- 
128,637);  Sao  Paulo  (450,000);  Bahia  (290,000); 
Belen   (200,000);  Porto  Alegre   (100,000). 

Of  these  we  are  specially  interested  in  Rio  de 
Janeiro,  Sao  Paulo  and  Porte  Alegre.  Rio  de  Janeiro 
is  one  of  the  world's  great  capitals.  With  an  incom- 
parable harbor,  splendid  public  buildings,  wide  and 
pretentious  avenues  and  all  the  devices  known  to  the 
Parisian  for  civic  adornment,  it  presents  a  fair  and 
smiling  front.  Its  situation  is  unfortunate  economi- 
cally, since  being  ringed  about  with  mountains  it  is 
not  easily  approached  from  the  land  side.  Incidentally 
it  might  be  added  that  it  draws  its  supplies  largely 
from  foreign  lands  and,  since  import  duties  are  very 
high,   is   one   of   the   most   expensive   places   in   the 

^The  Statesman's'  Year  Book,  1915,  pp.  746,  747. 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  207 

world  to  live.  A  globe-trotter  told  the  writer  that 
the  most  expensive  place  was  Antofagasta  in  Chili, 
but  that  Rio  was  a  close  second.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  South  American  cities  as  a  whole  are  uncom- 
fortable places  for  those  who's  purse  is  small. 

Sao  Paulo,  the  second  city,  is  the  coffee  center  of 
the  world.  Four-fifths  of  the  world's  coffee  comes 
from  Brazil  and  half  of  this  goes  through  Sao  Paulo. 
So  dependent  are  Brazil  and  Sao  Paulo  on  coffee  that 
a  few  years  ago,  when  the  market  was  dangerously 
oversupplied,  the  government  stepped  in  and  put 
through  the  famous  "valorisation  of  coffee"  legislation. 
Valorisation  was  a  process  by  which  the  government 
bought  up  vast  quantities  of  the  product  and  stored 
it  away  to  await  a  rise  in  price.^  It  had,  of  course, 
also  to  prohibit  the  development  of  any  more  planta- 
tions, since  the  limit  of  consumption  having  been 
reached  it  would  be  mere  madness  to  increase  the 
supply. 

Porto  Alegre  at  the  northern  extremity  of  the  great 
bay  Lagoa  dos  Patos  is  populated  to  a  considerable 
extent  by  Germans  and  Italians.  It  is  situated  at  the 
confluence  of  several  small  rivers  which  make  it  an 
advantageous  point  to  which  to  ship  from  the  interior. 
It  is  the  commercial  center  of  the  State  of  Rio  Grande 
do  Sul  and  has  quite  a  large  number  of  manufacturing 
industries. 

Rio  Grande  do  Sul,  the  city  in  which  our  bishop 
lives,  is  at  the  opposite  or  southern  end  of  the  Lagoa 
dos  Patos.  It  is  as  yet  only  a  town  of  some  30,000 
inhabitants,  but  its  situation  is  important  and  promises 
a  future  of  influence  and  power.  It  might  aid  the 
reader  in  getting  his  bearings  to  add  that  Rio  Grande 
is  next  to  the  southernmost  point  at  which  the  Church 
is  at  work,  and  that  Jaguarao,  the  most  southern,  is 
as  far  south  of  the  equator  as  a  line  about  half  way 

*  See  Chapter  X  of  Denis's  Brazil  for  a  description  of  this  movement. 


208  THE  NEW  WORLD 

between  Savannah  and  Charlestown  is  to  the  north  of 
it.  Writers  often  illustrate  the  difference  made  by 
living  the  other  side  of  the  equator,  by  showing  how 
much  of  our  literature  is  quite  inappropriate  in  south- 
ern latitudes.    For  example,  such  passages  as 

As  soon 
Seek  roses  in  December  and  ice  in  June; 
Hope  constancy  in  wind,  etc. 

But  winter  lingering  chills  the  lap  of  May 

are  nonsense  in  lands  where  winter  begins  in  June  and 
summer  commences  in  December. 


THE  CHURCH  IN  BRAZIL 

On  that  memorable  journey  to  India  made  in  1805-6 
by  the  saintly  Henry  Martyn,  his  ship  laid  up  at  Bahia 
for  a  fortnight.  Thus  it  befell  that  he  who  was  to 
become  one  of  the  world's  great  pioneers,  was  the 
first  missionary  of  the  Anglican  Communion  to  visit 
the  shores  of  Brazil.  His  biographer  tells  us  that  the 
two  weeks  he  spent  there  were  busy  ones,  and  that 
Martyn  was  "fascinated  by  the  tropical  glories  of  the 
coast  and  the  interior,  and  keenly  interested  in  the 
Portuguese  dons,  the  Franciscan  friars,  and  the  negro 
slaves."  He  took  advantage  of  the  opportunity  pre- 
sented to  meet  Portuguese  gentlemen  and  resident 
priests.  With  the  latter  he  had  lengthy  discussions, 
conducted  in  French  and  Latin,  on  the  subject  of 
Roman  Catholicism.  In  the  beautiful  gardens  and  in 
the  houses  of  such  friends  as  he  made  he  meditated 
and  prayed  with  the  people.  "As  he  walked  through 
the  streets  where  for  a  long  time  he  *saw  no  one 
but  negro  slaves  male  and  female';  as  he  passed  the 
churches  in  which  'they  were  performing  mass,'  and 
priests  of  all  colors  innumerable,  and  ascended  the 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  209 

battery  which  commanded  a  view  of  all  the  whole  bay 
of  All  Saints,  he  exclaimed,  'What  happy  missionary 
shall  be  sent  to  bear  the  name  of  Christ  to  these  west- 
ern regions?  When  shall  this  beautiful  country  be 
delivered  from  idolatry  and  spurious  Christianity? 
Crosses  there  are  in  abundance,  but  when  shall  the 
doctrine  of  the  Cross  be  held  up?' "  His  last  prayer, 
as  he  left  the  shores  of  Brazil,  was  that  "God  would 
interfere  on  behalf  of  his  Gospel/'  ^ 

The  next  Anglican  missionary  was  an  American. 
As  early  as  1853  the  Foreign  Committee  of  the  Board 
of  Missions,  in  response  to  the  appeal  of  "an  intelligent 
Episcopalian  resident  in  Rio  de  Janeiro,  setting  before 
the  Committee  the  pressing  necessities  of  the  people 
and  the  degree  of  preparedness  for  the  entrance  of 
the  pure  Gospel,"  sent  out  the  Rev.  W.  H.  Cooper,  of 
Pennsylvania,  but  he  was  unfortunately  shipwrecked 
on  the  way  and  abandoned  the  task.  No  one  else 
volunteered  for  South  America  until  1859,  when  the 
Rev.  Richard  Holden  of  Ohio  came  forward.  After 
two  years  spent  in  preparing  a  Portuguese  version  of 
the  Prayer  Book  Mr.  Holden  went  to  Para. 

Not  content  with  confining  his  efforts  to  Para,  the 
newcomer  attempted  a  missionary  journey  into  the 
interior;  but  before  two  months  had  passed  he  was 
forced  by  the  police  to  turn  back.  This  was  only  the 
beginning  of  the  persecution  to  which  he  was  sub- 
jected, for  on  his  arrival  at  Para  he  was  met  by  news- 
paper attacks  inspired  by  the  Roman  bishop.  Hoping 
to  find  a  kindlier  reception  he  moved  to  Bahia,  but 
all  to  no  purpose,  since  at  that  point  not  only  the  news- 
paper but  the  mobs  threatened  violence.  So  serious 
did  these  latter  become  that  the  American  Consul  had 
to  come  to  his  aid.  Though  he  persevered  for  a  while 
and  started  a  Sunday  School,  and  conducted  services 
and  circulated  copies  of  the  Bible  and  Prayer  Book, 

*  Smith,  Henry  Martyn.  p.  106  S. 


210  THE  NEW  WORLD 

he  found  in  the  end  that  the  task  was  too  much  for 
him,  and  resigned  in  1864.^ 

The  next  step  toward  the  estabHshment  of  a  per- 
manent mission  in  Brazil  was  taken  in  1889,  this 
time  not  by  the  Board  of  Missions  but  by  the  Ameri- 
can Church  Missionary  Society.  We  quote  a  letter 
written  some  years  later  by  the  Rev.  I.  Newton 
Stranger,  one  of  the  members  of  the  Executive  Com- 
mittee of  the  Society  at  that  time: 

The  honor  of  starting  the  Brazil  Mission  belongs  to  the 
young  men  in  the  missionary  society  of  the  Alexandria 
Seminary.  Having  become  convinced  that  they  should  do 
something  more  than  talk  and  pray,  their  minds  were  pro- 
videntially led  to  think  of  Brazil.  Having  opened  communi- 
cation with  some  Presbyterian  missionaries  there,  they  found 
that  they  could  have  a  clear  field  in  Porto  Alegre.  They 
made  application  to  our  Missionary  Board,  but  their  scheme 
was  voted  to  be  impossible.  They  then  made  application  to 
the  American  Church  Missionary  Society.  The  society  was 
at  a  low  ebb,  with  little  money  and  a  rapidly  diminishing 
constituency.  After  some  hesitation  our  committee  agreed  at 
least  to  hear  their  story,  and  wrote  for  them  to  send  a 
delegation  from  the  society  at  the  seminary  to  New  York  and 
present  their  case.  Our  committee  met  Messrs.  Roderick  and 
Clark  at  the  rooms  in  the  Bible  House.  They  demonstrated 
that  they  had  gone  over  the  whole  matter  in  a  very  careful 
and  thorough  manner.  They  martialed  their  facts  in  a  very 
telling  way  in  two  addresses,  and  then  underwent  a  cross- 
examination  fey  the  committee.  When  they  were  through, 
everyone  was  deeply  impressed  with  the  call,  but  there  was 
no  money  in  sight,  except  that  which  was  promised  from 
Virginia,  for  the  work.  There  was  not  a  man  in  the  com- 
mittee that  did  not  feel  ready  to  begin  the  work,  if  we 
could  get  the  means.  But  some  were  opposed  to  trying  to 
do  the  apparently  impossible.  The  chairman,  Dr.  Watkins, 
called  on  the  Rev.  Dr.  Edwards,  of  Philadelphia,  to  lead  us 
in  prayer.  We  needed  light  and  courage  and  faith,  and  I 
do  not  think  it  is  too  much  to  say  that  God  answered  that 
prayer  at  the  time.  When  we  arose  from  our  knees  I  said 
that  I  believed  that  if  this  work  was  of  God,  as  I  felt  it 
was,  we  would  get  the  money  for  it,  if  we  were  ready ^  to 
go  forward,  and  moved  that  we  make  the  venture  of  faith. 

^Reports  of  the  Board  of  Missions,  1853-64. 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  211 

The  Rev.  Dr.  Neilson,  I  think  it  was,  seconded  the  motion, 
which  was  carried  without  opposition,  and  we  arranged  to 
take  the  first  steps  and  the  young  men  were  sent  on  their 
way  rejoicing  that  they  were  in  the  way  of  seeing  their 
plans  of  a  pure  Gospel  for  Brazil  carried  out.  .    .   . 

Thus,  in  1888,  the  Rev.  R.  A.  Roderick  and  the  Rev. 
F.  P.  Clark  were  appointed  as  missionaries  to  Brazil. 
Their  ambitions,  however,  were  not  to  be  realized,  for, 
one  by  an  accident  and  the  other  by  illness,  they  were 
prevented  from  entering  the  work.  In  their  stead,  in 
the  following  June  two  young  deacons,  just  graduated 
from  the  Virginia  Theological  Seminary,  the  Rev. 
James  W.  Morris  and  the  Rev.  Lucien  Lee  Kinsolv- 
ing,  were  appointed.  Having  been  ordained  to  the 
priesthood  in  August,  these  young  pioneers  sailed  from 
Newport  News  on  the  first  of  September,  1889. 

The  inception  and  policy  of  the  Brazil  mission  dis- 
tinguish it  from  any  of  the  other  southern  missions 
of  the  Church.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  noteworthy 
that  from  the  beginning  the  mission  has  gone  forward 
without  interruption.  This  is  in  part  due  to  the  happy 
circumstance  that  of  the  original  little  group  that 
went  out,  all  were  men  of  exceptional  ability,  and, 
what  is  more  important,  all  remained  there  for  many 
years  of  continuous  service.  Of  the  four  pioneers. 
Bishop  Kinsolving  and  Mr.  Meem — the  latter  went  in 
1892 — are  still  in  the  field,  and  Dr.  Morris  and  Bishop 
Brown  who  went  with  IMr.  Meem,  left,  one  after  a 
little  less  and  the  other  after  a  Httle  more  than  twenty 
years  of  service.  In  the  second  place,  the  method  of 
the  mission  has  been  from  the  beginning  evangelistic. 
A  day  school,  to  be  sure,  was  attempted  in  the  early 
years,  and  since  1907  several  parochial  schools  have 
been  started,  but  except  for  these  the  policy  has  been 
directly  evangelistic.  In  the  third  place,  the  leaders 
have  had  a  larger  success  than  have  workers  elsewhere 
in   Latin   America   in   developing   a   native   ministry. 


212  THE  NEW  WORLD 

When  the  mission  was  only  four  years  old  four  dea- 
cons were  ordained,  and  today,  out  of  a  staff  of 
eighteen,  fourteen  were  ordained  in  the  field,  of  whom 
thirteen  are  Brazilians.  Many  of  these  last  were  pre- 
pared for  orders,  it  should  be  added,  in  a  theological 
school  at  Porto  Alegre.  This  was  started  in  1903,  with 
Dr.  Brown  as  dean.  Of  recent  years  the  school  has 
been  closed,  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  supply  of  Bra- 
zilian clergy  was  in  danger  of  exceeding  the  demand — 
an  excellent  illustration  of  Bishop  Kinsolving's  con- 
sistent refusal  to  yield  to  the  temptation  to  go  ahead 
too  rapidly. 

Mr.  Morris  and  Mr.  Kinsolving  settled  first  in  Sao 
Paulo,  where  they  occupied  themselves  studying  the 
Portuguese  language.  By  June,  1890,  just  a  year 
after  their  appointment,  they  found  that  they  could 
preach  haltingly  in  the  vernacular,  and  at  Trinitytide 
held  their  first  service.  This  took  place  in  the  large 
"sala"  of  their  dwelling  in  Porto  Alegre,  to  which 
point  they  had  in  the  meantime  moved.  That  their 
services  were  welcome  became  at  once  apparent,  for 
congregations  of  eager  and  interested  listeners  gath- 
ered about  them. 

Since  it  was  at  an  early  date — 1892 — that  Miss  Mary 
Packard  went  out,  this  is  the  proper  place  to  refer 
to  her.  Except  for  the  wives  of  the  American  clergy, 
and  for  Deaconess  Pitts,  who  served  from  1899  to 
1904,  Miss  Packard  is  and  has  been  our  only  woman 
missionary  in  Brazil.  To  her  belongs  much  credit  for 
the  transformation  of  homes,  for  successful  work 
among  the  women  and  children,  and  the  training  of 
the  youth  of  the  Brazilian  Church. 

The  first  Brazilian  convocation  met  in  Porto  Alegre 
in  the  late  spring  of  1892,  but  no  bishop  having  been 
appointed  for  Brazil — the  missionaries  were  under  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  Bishop  of  Virginia — this  convoca- 
tion had  no  canonical  standing.     This  served  but  to 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  213 

emphasize  the  already  urgent  need  for  an  episcopal 
visitation.  Converts  had  been  admitted  to  the  Holy 
Communion  without  confirmation,  and  four  candi- 
dates for  Holy  Orders  were  awaiting  ordination. 
When  the  matter  was  brought  to  his  attention,  the 
Presiding  Bishop  at  once  requested  the  Bishop  of 
West  Virginia  (Dr.  Peterkin)  to  make  a  visitation. 
This  he  did,  and  while  there  confirmed  one  hun- 
dred and  forty-two  people  and  ordained  four  deacons. 
Most  important  of  all,  his  appointment  and  visitation 
gave  the  mission  a  regular  organization.  Thus  tech- 
nically the  Egreja  Brasileira  Episcopal  dates  from  the 
spring  of  1893.^ 

The  need  of  a  bishop  for  Brazil  had,  by  1898,  be- 
come imperative,  but  the  problem  could  not  be  settled 
in  what  is  now  the  ordinary  way.  Out  of  respect  for 
those  in  this  country  who  objected  to  the  enterprise, 
it  seemed  best  to  Bishop  Peterkin  and  those  in  au- 
thority to  advise  the  infant  church  to  elect  its  own 
bishop  and  send  him  seeking  consecration  to  the 
United  States — just  as  had  been  done  in  Haiti  and 
Mexico.  Following  this  advice,  and  in  response  to  a 
cable  recommending  it  from  the  American  Church 
Missionary  Society,  a  convocation  was  duly  summoned 
in  the  city  of  Porto  Alegre  at  which  Mr.  Kinsolving 
was  elected  on  the  first  ballot. 

Shortly  thereafter  he  went  to  New  York  and  was 
consecrated  in  St.  Bartholomew's  Church  on  the  Feast 
of  the  Epiphany,  1899.  The  next  step  to  be  noted 
was  taken  in  1905,  when  the  American  Church  Mis- 
sionary Society  transferred  its  responsibility  for  the 
undertaking  to  the  Board.  This,  it  will  be  remembered, 
was  coincident  with  a  similar  step  in  the  Cuban  work. 

The  time   had  come  now   when   the   ecclesiastical 

*A  second  Episcopal  visitation  was  made  in  1897  by  Dr.  Stirling,  the 
English  Bishop  of  the  Falkland  Islands,  with  residence  in  Buenos 
Ayres.  He  confirmed  one  hundred  and  fifty-nine,  and  ordained  to  the 
priesthood  three  deacons. 


214  THE  NEW  WORLD 

standing  of  the  mission  was  found  to  be  unsatisfactory. 
The  Church  was  still  "the  Church  in  Brazil,"  a  foreign 
Church,  and  Bishop  Kinsolving  was  still  a  foreign 
bishop.  While  there  was  nothing  inherently  objection- 
able to  this,  it  did  not  prove  any  more  practicable  in  this 
instance  than  it  had  in  Mexico  and  Haiti.  Accordingly, 
following  the  precedents  set  in  those  fields,  steps  were 
taken  to  bring  the  Egreja  Brasileira  Episcopal  within 
the  fold  of  the  Church.  The  inevitable  formalities 
had  to  be  observed,  and  the  Brazilian  convocation  pe- 
titioned the  American  Church  for  admission  as  a  mis- 
sionary district.  This  request  was  presented  to  the 
General  Convention  in  Richmond  in  1907.  Having 
been  favorably  received,  the  next  step  was  for  the 
Independent  Brazilian  Church  to  go  out  of  existence, 
which  was  accomplished  by  the  resignation  of  Bishop 
Kinsolving,  following  which  the  congregations  in 
southern  Brazil  were  created  into  the  Missionary  Dis- 
trict of  Southern  Brazil  and  Bishop  Kinsolving  elected 
to  the  new  district. 

Such,  in  short,  is  the  story  of  our  southernmost 
mission.  Let  us  turn  our  attention  to  the  problems 
and  methods  which  characterize  the  work. 

From  the  beginning  two  aspects  of  the  religious 
situation  were  particularly  noticeable:  the  surprising 
absence  of  any  provision  for  the  spiritual  needs  of 
the  people — surprising  because  a  branch  of  the  Church 
had  been  in  the  land  some  three  hundred  years — and 
the  increasing  dissatisfaction  on  the  part  of  the  more 
educated  and  thoughtful  people  with  this  lack  of  at- 
tention. For  example,  when  Bishop  Kinsolving  first 
went  to  Rio  Grande  he  found  but  one  priest  to  shep- 
herd a  population  of  25,000,  and  in  Pelotas,  in  the 
same  year,  Mr.  Meem  found  two  priests  for  45,000, 
one  of  whom  was  the  old  and  infirm  chaplain  of  the 
Portuguese  Hospital.  In  1899,  in  Jaguarao,  a  grow- 
ing city  of  between  15,000  and  20,000,  Mr.  Brande 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  215 

found  only  one  priest.  Is  there  a  remote  village  in 
the  United  States  thus  poorly  provided?  In  the  vil- 
lage of  Areal,  where  our  missionaries  went  in  1898, 
there  had  never  been  a  resident  priest,  nor,  so  far  as 
could  be  ascertained,  had  any  church  office  ever  been 
said.  In  the  railroad  city  of  Santa  Maria,  where  a 
very  successful  work  was  established,  there  had  been 
no  priest  since  the  populace  had  expelled  one  some 
years  before.  No  successor  had  even  been  appointed. 
Many  similar  incidents  could  be  cited  as  to  the  needs 
of  the  cities,  while  in  the  country  districts  the  absence 
of  the  Word  of  Life  was  even  more  evident. 

The  result  of  this  condition  was  that  the  people 
were  not  only  unshepherded,  but  even  ignorant  about 
the  first  principles  of  the  Faith.  Almost  nothing  was 
known  about  our  Lord.  One  of  the  missionaries  tells 
how  a  certain  village  chose  Him  for  their  "patron 
saint."  The  celebration  of  His  birth  was  quite  over- 
shadowed by  other  less  important  celebrations.  In  a 
word,  as  might  be  expected,  the  religion  of  the  people 
— where  there  was  any — had  become  grossly  super- 
stitious, and  out-and-out  image  worship  was  rampant. 
If  an  historical  parallel  is  sought,  perhaps  the  nearest 
we  can  reach  is  that  of  colonial  Virginia,  when  ^ 
"glebes  and  church  buildings  were  sold  for  a  song, 
and  the  proceeds — which  were  to  be  used  *for  any 
public  purpose  not  religious' — were  sometimes  embez- 
zled by  the  sheriff's  officers.  Guzzling  planters 
drank  from  chalices  and  passed  cheese  on  communion 
patens.  A  marble  font  became  a  horse-trough.  Com- 
munion plates,  the  gift  of  good  Queen  Anne,  adorned 
the  sideboards  of  officers  of  the  state.     Discouraged 

1  McConnell,  History  of  the  American  Episcopal  Church,  p.  117_  S. 
Colonial  Churches  in  the  Original  Colony  of  Virginia,  second  edition. 
Chap.  XXXIV.  The  author  of  this  last  rightly  emphasizes  the  fact 
that  though  there  has  been  no  exaggeration  of  the  extent  to  which  the 
Colonial  Church  was  neglected,  the  number  of  actual  incidents  of  de- 
pravity has  been  considerably  overstated.     Still,  the  illustration  is  good. 


216  THE  NEW  WORLD 

and  without  support,  the  clergy  in  large  numbers  laid 
down  their  spiritual  callings."  And,  mark  you,  this 
destitution  in  Virginia  was  caused  by  the  neglect  of 
the  mother  Church,  just  as  Brazil  suffered  from  being 
forgotten  by  those  who  should  have  aided  her. 

When  our  clergy  began  to  preach  and  teach  in  the 
midst  of  this  spiritual  wilderness,  they  received,  as 
has  already  been  stated,  a  glad  welcome.  So  much 
so,  that  from  the  first  their  congregations  bore  a  re- 
markably large  share  of  the  expense  of  the  work.  In 
many  of  the  missions,  not  content  with  helping  finan- 
cially, the  laity  undertook  to  assist  the  minister  in  his 
parish  visiting  and  sick  calls;  and,  as  always  results 
when  people  are  given  something  to  do,  interest  grew 
apace.  Moreover,  the  old  Church  began  to  stir  itself. 
In  Rio  Grande,  for  example,  in  place  of  the  two  who 
were  there  in  1891,  there  are  now  twenty  or  twenty- 
five  priests  at  work;  under  them  two  large  schools 
and  many  new  congregations  have  been  organized,  and 
the  people  are  being  instructed  and  shepherded  with 
care  and  zeal. 

Dr.  Morris,  in  the  Spirit  of  Missions  in  1908,  gave 
us  the  following  account  of  the  method  pursued  by 
our  clergy: 

When  a  man  is  sent  to  open  a  new  center  of  work  his 
orders  are:  "Give  yourself  entirely  to  preaching  and  expound- 
ing the  Word  of  God.  Do  not  come  before  the  people  as  a 
school  teacher.  Let  all  the  community  know  you  once  for 
all,  as  a  preacher,  a  prophet,  an  official  witness  to  Christ, 
an  accredited  messenger  of  Christ's  Church.  Let  the  people 
see  that  this  is  your  sole  business  among  them.  You  are 
to  do  this  one  thing  to  proclaim  the  good  news  of  salvation 
in  Christ,  and  to  invite  men  to  use  and  enjoy  the  reasonable 
and  reverent  faith  of  our  truly  Catholic  Church." 

Experience  has  shown  that  for  best  results  it  is  necessary 
to  use  at  the  very  start  the  distinctive  forms  of  the  church's 
liturgical  worship.  For  a  while  the  missionaries  were  led 
to  believe  that  these  people  should  have  at  the  beginning 
the   simplest   and    even   the   barest    form   of    service.     They 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  217 

thought  at  first  that  it  might  be  best  not  to  wear  the  surplice, 
and  indeed  not  to  conduct  public  service  in  any  distinctly 
"Episcopal"  manner. 

This  was  an  entire  mistake.  The  ordered  form  of  the 
worship  in  accordance  with  the  Prayer  Book  was  particularly 
effective  among  the  Brazilians.  Liturgical  services,  by  vested 
clergy,  in  a  well-arranged  place  of  worship,  appeal  to  their 
sense  of  propriety,  and  give  for  them  solemnity  to  the  act 
of  worship  and  power  to  the  Word  preached  and  expounded. 

Therefore  when  a  missionary  is  deputed  to  open  up  a  new 
and  important  center  of  work,  the  rule  is  for  him  to  wait 
until  he  can  establish  the  regulation  services  of  the  Church. 
He  is  to  delay  his  public  preaching  until  he  can  begin  in  this 
permanent  way.  He  rents  a  convenient  hall,  fits  it  up  for 
a  chapel,  and  makes  preparation  for  a  formal  opening  ser- 
vice. He  meets  and  visits  as  many  of  the  people  as  he  can, 
explains  in  private  what  he  has  come  to  do,  and  gathers  as 
many  of  the  people  as  he  can  interest  to  his  own  house  or 
elsewhere  for  the  practice  of  the  hymns  and  chants,  and  for 
instruction  in  the  order  of  the  service.  He  thus  has  a  num- 
ber of  people  ready  to  take  part  in  public  worship. 

Then  on  a  specified  day,  after  wide  notice  given,  he  opens 
his  new  place  of  worship  with  an  inaugural  service.  He  has 
with  him  the  bishop,  and  as  many  as  possible  of  the  other 
clergy.  He  begins  with  the  regular  order  of  Evening  Prayer, 
which  will  be  reverently  and  enthusiastically  participated  in 
by  the  large  crowd  assembled.  And  then  the  bishop  and 
others  deliver  addresses  explanatory  of  the  Church  and  her 
ways,  emphasizing  her  historical  position  and  her  apostolic 
heritage,  and  closing  with  an  earnest  presentation  of  the  old, 
ever  new  Gospel  message  of  salvation  in  Jesus  Christ. 

It  is  found  that  the  Church  put  before  a  community  in  this 
formal  and  official  manner  attracts  attention  and  stimulates 
inquiry  at  once,  and  that  from  the  initial  service  there  is  a 
congregation  of  regular  worshipers  gathered  together. 

In  1907  the  bishop  wrote  that  the  time  had  come 
when  mission  schools  were  needed.  "Thus  far,"  he 
said,  "we  have  sown  widely.  The  future  demands  that 
we  sow  deeply."  In  1909  two  parochial  schools  were 
started,  one  in  Bage  and  one  in  Porto  Alegre.  Con- 
cerning them  the  bishop  wrote  again : 

What  is  needed  is  a  boarding-school  for  boys  and  girls, 
where  they  may  be  segregated  during  their  formative  period 


218  THE  NEW  WORLD 

from  the  untoward  influences  surrounding  young  people  here; 
be  brought  under  the  daily  and  constant  influence  of  con- 
secrated personahties,  saturated  with  the  Church's  culture  and 
moral  uplift,  then  sent  back  to  their  homes  and  parishes 
imbued  with  a  loyalty  and  a  strong  grasp  which  they  could 
not  have  attained  had  they  been  thrust  into  the  ranks  of  life 
with  only  the  veneer  of  an  education.  All  this  has  been 
achieved  in  the  case  of  our  native  clergy.  The  church  should 
devote  herself  to  the  task  of  training  some  of  the  most  prom- 
ising of  her  sons  and  daughters  into  strong,  loyal  and  intelli- 
gent laymen  and  churchwomen. 

The  Bage  school  was  discontinued  shortly  after  this 
and  interest  centered  upon  the  school  in  Porto  Alegre. 
As  the  Escola  Diocesana  this  has  grown  into  an  im- 
portant institution,  with  forty  day  pupils  and  twenty- 
six  boarders.  In  order  not  to  "swamp  a  small  num- 
ber of  Church-boys  in  a  large  majority  of  semi-pa- 
gans," it  has  been  found  wise  to  advance  the  tuition 
for  non-Church  boys.  'The  school,"  writes  the 
bishop,  "enjoys  a  good  reputation,  and  is  building  up 
surely  and  wisely  a  wide  clientele."  And  again :  "This 
need  (of  a  central  mission  school)  can  scarcely  be 
overemphasized.  The  defects  of  the  system  of  in- 
struction throughout  the  state,  not  only  on  the  physi- 
cal and  moral  sides,  but  the  inherent  inadequacy  of 
the  mental  training  of  the  system  in  vogue,  are  appar- 
ent to  all  everywhere.  From  the  lips  of  educational- 
ists of  experience,  I  have  heard  the  opinion  expressed 
that  the  pseudo-philosophical  system  of  positivism  has 
exercised  a  most  baneful  influence  upon,  if  not  al- 
most entirely  destroyed,  all  public  instruction  obtain- 
able in  the  local  and  normal  schools." 

One  last  matter  compels  our  attention,  and  that  is 
the  revision  of  the  Portuguese  Prayer  Book  and  Bible. 
It  will  be  remembered  that  before  Mr.  Holden  went 
out  in  1861  a  translation  of  the  Prayer  Book  had 
been  prepared.  One  of  the  first  needs  felt  by  the 
later  missionaries  was   for  printed  copies  of  this — 


TWO   HUGE  REPUBLICS  219 

or  better,  a  printed  revision.  To  meet  this  demand, 
Dr.  Brown  and  Mr.  Cabral  revised  and  largely  re- 
translated the  Portuguese  Prayer  Book.  It  received 
the  imprimatur  of  the  Custodian  of  the  Standard  Book 
of  Common  Prayer,  and  as  early  as  1896  part  of  it 
was  published.  The  whole  Prayer  Book  was  brought 
out  in  1898  by  the  Bishop  White  Prayer  Book  Society, 
while  Dr.  Brown  was  on  furlough  in  the  United  States. 
In  1903  the  British  and  American  Bible  Society  de- 
cided to  revise  the  Portuguese  Bible  then  in  use.  Dr. 
Brown  and  Mr.  Cabral  were  asked  to  go  on  the  revision 
committee,  but  only  Dr.  Brown  was  able  to  accept. 
He  became  "the  moving  spirit  and  chief  collaborator" 
in  the  work.  Some  of  the  revised  New  Testament  is 
his  work  and  practically  all  of  the  Old  Testament. 
In  1914,  Bishop  Kinsolving  was  able  to  write:  'The 
Revised  Version  of  the  Portuguese  Bible  is  now  an 
accomplished  fact, — thanks  chiefly  to  the  untiring 
energy,  the  ripe  scholarship  and  the  exhaustless  en- 
thusiasm of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Brown,  who,  during  the  last 
months  of  his  stay  in  Brazil,  has  averaged  ten  hours 
a  day  (sometimes  twelve)  of  revision  work  on  the 
Old  Testament/' 

The  following  summary  of  the  Church's  work  in  Brazil  has 
been  prepared  by  the  bishop. 

Rio  dos  Sinos  (pronounced  "Ree-oh  dos  See-nos").  A 
country  district,  in  which  the  farmers,  planters  and  cattle 
owners  have  built  their  own  church.  Calvary  Church. 

Jaguarao  (pronounced  "Jag-wa-row"  [the  "ow"  being  nasal 
and  metallic]).  The  most  southern  station  in  the  district, 
a  growing  frontier  town  of  about  10,000,  with  a  little  Gothic 
church,  Christ  Church. 

Bage  (pronounced  "Bah-jay"  [the  "j"  having  the  sound  of 
the  "s"  in  "treasure"]).  A  thriving  town  on  the  Uruguay 
frontier.  The  church— Church  of  the  Crucified— and  lot  were 
secured  largely  by  the  congregation. 

Santa  Helena  and  Florida.  Two  country  churches  with 
congregations  consisting  of  Italians,  Germans,  Brazilians, 
Belgians,  French  and  Africans.     In  St.  Helena— Church  of 


220  THE  NEW  WORLD 

the  Salvation — there  are  services  in  German  as  well  as  in 
Portuguese.  The  congregation  is  composed  of  the  peasant 
type,  very  faithful,  and  noted  for  their  congregational  sing- 
ing. 

Viamdo  (pronounced  "Vee-ah-mow"  [the  "ao"  Is  always 
very  nasal  and  sharp]).  A  country  village,  served  from 
Porto  Alegre,  where  there  is  a  church  building — Grace  Church 
— erected  by  the  people  themselves. 

Santa  Maria  (pronounced  "Mah-ree-ah").  An  important 
railroad  town  in  the  heart  of  Brazil.  The  congregation,  which 
is  composed  of  the  best  families  of  the  town,  has  built  a 
beautiful  Gothic  church — Church  of  the  Mediator — and  rec- 
tory. The  central  tower  of  the  church  has  an  illuminated 
cross,  which  can  be  seen  at  night  for  miles  around.  Besides 
the  church,  there  is  the  Chapel  of  the  Mediator,  also  built  by 
the  congregation. 

Sao  Leopoldo  (pronounced  "Sao  Lay-oh-pol'-do")-  A 
small  town  near  Porto  Alegre.  A  lot  has  been  purchased, 
and  a  church — Church  of  the  Nazarene — will  be  built  if  the 
growth  of  the  town  seems  to  warrant  it. 

Dom  Pedrito.  A  town  of  4,000  or  5,000  in  the  center  of 
the  richest  cattle  districts  of  southern  Brazil.  There  is  a 
church — Church  of  the  Nativity — built  by  the  people  on  a  lot 
purchased  by  them,  without  help  from  outside. 

Livramento  (pronounced  "Lee-vra-men'-to").  A  frontier 
town  bordering  on  Uruguay,  the  center  of  a  large  cattle  dis- 
trict with  many  slaughter-houses.  Some  of  the  church  people 
are  well-to-do.  The  church  is  called  the  Church  of  the 
Nazarene. 

Sao ^  Gabriel  (pronounced  "Sao  Gah-bree-el'').  An  old 
town  in  the  interior,  the  outgrowth  of  an  old  military  garri- 
son.   The  church  is  the  Church  of  the  Redemption. 

Pelotas  (pronounced  "Pay-loh-tas").  A  town  of  a  good 
deal  of  wealth.  The  church  is  very  flourishing.  The  Church 
of  the  Redeemer,  with  seating  capacity  of  400,  was  built  by 
the  people  of  Pelotas.  The  services  are  especially  successful, 
and  there  is  a  thriving  Young  Men's  Bible  Class. 

Rio  Grande  do  Sid  (pronounced  "Ree-oh  Gran-day  do 
Sul").  The  port  of  the  State,  it  contains  the  Church  of  Our 
Saviour,  one  of  the  most  beautiful  ecclesiastical  structures 
in  South  America.  The  Sunday  school  here  is  especially  note- 
worthy.    The  congregation  includes  people  of  all  classes. 

Porto  Alegre  (pronounced  "Por-to  Ah-lay-gray")-  The 
capital  of  the  State,  with  a  population  of  about  150,000;  a 
thriving,  progressive  town,  the  center  of  several  State  Normal 
Schools  and  American  Law  Schools.     Many  of  the  students 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  221 

from  these  schools  attend  the  church  services.  Besides  Trinity 
Church,  the  Diocesan  School  is  situated  here. 

Rio  Meyer.  One  of  the  numerous  suburbs  of  Rio  de 
Janeiro,  containing  a  population  of  about  70,000.  At  present 
the  congregation  of  Trinity  Church  worship  in  a  hall. 

Rio  de  Janeiro  (pronounced  "Ja-nay-ee-ro").  The  capital 
of  the  Republic.  The  Church  of  the  Redeemer  has  a  recently 
built  edifice.  The  congregation  is  composed  of  high  class 
people,  some  English  and  some  upper  class  Brazilian.  There 
is  also  an  _  English  church  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
Anglican  Bishop  in  Argentina  and  Eastern  South  America. 
The  two_  churches  are  under  the  care  of  the  American  and 
the  English  archdeacons  respectively. 

Thus  the  Church  in  Brazil  has  borne  a  gcK>d  witness 
and  laid  foundations  which  no  earthly  power  can 
shake.  And  yet  we  must  not  expect  too  great  things  of 
it  in  the  immediate  future,  since  the  conditions  which 
it  has  to  face  are  unusually  difficult.  While  we  in 
North  America  are  surrounded  by  indifference  and  a 
vast  amount  of  agnosticism,  we  have  nevertheless  on 
our  side  the  unuttered  and  oftentimes  unconscious 
backing  of  the  people,  and  we  owe  this  to  the  fact  that 
from  the  beginning  the  teachings  of  the  Church  have 
been  accepted  consciously  and  unconsciously  by  the 
leaders  of  the  nation. 

In  Brazil,  on  the  other  hand,  and  throughout  all 
Latin  America,  this  has  not  been  the  case.  Bishop 
Knight,  speaking  of  this  recently,  said: 

For  many  years  I  have  been  studying  the  question  of  the 
instability  of  governments  in  countries  ordinarily  known  as 
Latin  countries.  After  careful  study  of  the  historical  facts, 
it  has  seemed  to  me  that  the  solution  is  a  religious  one.  The 
Anglo-Saxons  and  kindred  peoples,  in  seeking  liberty,  won  all 
of  the  rights  of  liberty,  or  the  institutions  of  liberty  as  the 
term  is  used,  through  a  religious  principle.  The  Anglo-Saxon 
asserted  that  liberty  belonged  to  him  as  a  religious  right  and 
privilege.  It  was  a  gift  to  mankind  from  God.  So  he 
founded  his  desire  and  all  of  his  efforts  to  obtain  liberty 
on  a  religious  principle.  He  not  only  argued  from  this  stand- 
point, but  he  waged  war  from  this  stand-point.     Acquiring 


222  THE  NEW  WORLD 

liberty  in  this  way,  he  treated  it  from  the  religious  point  of 
view. 

His  new  institutions,  as  a  result,  had  that  stability  which 
can  only  come  from  the  assurance  that  the  principle  on  which 
they  are  founded  is  God-given,  is  based  upon  the  Fatherhood 
of  God  and  the  Sonship  of  mankind. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Latins  were  under  an  ecclesiastical 
system  which  asserted  that  men  did  not  have  liberty  of  con- 
science, or  the  right  to  think ;  but  rather  must  receive  opinions 
and  their  beliefs  through  the  authority  which  was  given  to 
the  Church,  They  were  told  that  when  they  stood  for  liberty, 
individual  right  to  think,  they  were  going  counter  to  the 
authority  of  the  Church.  In  their  minds,  that  authority  had 
been  through  the  centuries  identified  with  the  Authority  of 
God.  And  so,  when  they  came  out  for  freedom  they  had 
to  take  the  stand  that  it  was  a  human  right  and  belonged  to 
them  because  they  were  men.  Thus,  in  asserting  their  rights 
they  went  counter  to  the  Church  and  the  ecclesiasical  authori- 
ties, and  what  was  worse,  contrary  to  what  they  had  been 
told  was  the  Divine  Will. 

Setting  up  liberty  in  this  way,  they  severed  their  connection 
with  the  only  exponent  of  religion  which  they  had,  and  hence 
with  religion  itself. 

The  Brazilian  state,  therefore,  and  all  the  other 
Latin  states,  were  founded  upon  a  rejection  of  the 
teachings  of  the  Church.  That  this  should  be  fol- 
lowed by  a  general  deterioration  was  only  to  be  ex- 
pected. If  the  state  be  founded  upon  a  theory  which 
is  proclaimed  to  be  atheistical,  how  can  one  expect  the 
citizens  to  remain  followers  of  the  Truth.  Thus,  not 
only  in  things  political  but  equally  in  matters  economic 
and  social,  agnosticism  and  antinomianism  followed. 
The  kind  of  liberty  which  they  had  won  brought  with 
it,  writes  Bishop  Knight, 

a  certain  freedom  of  unbelief.  The  prevalence  of  what  is 
ordinarily  known  as  free  thought,  the  skepticism  and  unbelief 
which  is  so  very  extensive  in  Latin  countries,  particularly 
among  the  men,  these  can  be  directly  traced  to  that  funda- 
mental error  of  being  forced  to  assert  that  liberty  belonged 
to  them  as  human  beings.  They  placed  the  pyramid  on  the 
pinnacle,  and  not  on  the  base.    Until  men  in  these  countries 


TWO  HUGE  REPUBLICS  223 

shall  come  to  a  realization  of  the  fact  that  freedom  is  some- 
thing very  closely  associated  with  Divine  things,  their  religion 
will  not  be  a  governing  and  controlling  power  in  their  actions 
and  thoughts. 

It  IS  with  such  a  state  of  affairs  as  this  that  the 
Church  has  to  contend.  It  has  to  go  to  men  and 
women  and  say  to  them:  You  were  mistaken  origi- 
nally when  in  founding  your  democracies  you  thought 
you  were  cutting  yourselves  loose  from  the  true 
Church.  You  were  mistaken  also  when  in  establish- 
ing freedom  of  thought  in  matters  educational  you 
supposed  that  you  were  stepping  outside  the  limits  of 
the  Fold  of  Christ. 

Not  only  has  the  Church  to  say  these  things  but 
it  has  to  say  them  to  a  people  who  liave  had  this 
error  ground  into  them  by  wellnigh  a  hundred  years  of 
thought.  Do  not  the  workers  need  our  prayers  and 
our  sympathy,  and  have  not  the  missions  to  the  Latin 
world  a  great  task  before  them? 

The  New  World  must  be  brought  to  Christ.  The 
New  World  must  hold  itself  up  before  the  nations  as 
an  exemplar  of  Christian  Democracy.  How  else  can 
these  things  be  accomplished,  unless  we  send  forth 
laborers  to  the  harvest? 


APPENDIX  I 

THE  PRONUNCIATION  OF  SPANISH  WORDS 

The  vowels  in  Spanish  are  pronounced,  a  as  a  in  far;  e 
as  the  a  in  hay;  i  as  e  in  me;  o  as  o  in  loss;  u  as  oo  in  too. 

Of  these^  a,  e  and  o  are  what  are  called  strong  vowels, 
and  u  and  i  are  weak.  This  distinction  is  important,  because 
only  by  knowing  about  it  can  one  ascertain  how  to  pronounce 
the  diphthong. 

The  diphthongs  are  formed  of  two  vowels  blended  into 
one  syllable,  each  vowel  being  distinctly  heard.  These  two 
vowels  are  either  one  strong  and  one  weak  (or  vice  versa) 
or  two  weak  ones.  Two  strong  vowels  cannot  form  a  diph- 
thong. 

When  a  diphthong  is  composed  of  a  strong  and  a  weak 
vowel  the  stress  is  on  the  strong  one;  when  it  is  composed 
of  two  weak  vowels  the  stress  is  on  the  last  of  the  two. 
The  following  illustrations  may  be  given: 

AguAdilla  ValparAiso        Terra  del  FuEgo 

DuArte  SantiAgo  GuAdalajara 

Any  deviation  from  these  rules  is  indicated  by  an  accent 
over  the  vowel  on  which  the  stress  is  to  be  laid.  This  dis- 
solves the  diphthong,  making  it  two  syllables  instead  of  one. 

When  a  diphthong  comes  at  the  end  of  a  word,  if  there  is 
no  written  accent,  neither  vowel  has  any  decided  stress. 

The  chief  difficulty  found  in  Spanish  pronunciation  is  in 
the  use  of  the  consonants,  and  the  following  will  have  to 
be  examined  in  detail  if  the  matter  is  to  be  mastered: 

C  has  two  sounds : 

(a)  the  hard  sound  of  k  before  a,  o,  u,  or  a  consonant: 

Cuba  (Koo  bah),  Vera  Cruz  (Krooz). 

(b)  the  soft  sound  of  th  in  thin  before  e,  i;  but  note 

that  the  soft  c  in  Spanish  America  is  pronounced 
like  s. 
ch  is  a  separate  letter  (found  after  c  in  dictionaries)  and 
sounds  as  ch  in  church:   Chiapa. 
225 


226  THE  NEW  WORLD 

d  has  a  tinge  of  th  in  although,  especially  between  vowels 

and  at  the  end  of  words :  Madrid,  Ojeda. 
g  has  two  sounds: 

(a)  the  hard  sound  of  the  English  g  in  gap  before  con- 

sonants and  the  vowels  a,  o,  u:   grande,  Gonzalez, 
Guerra,  Mayaguez. 

(b)  the  aspirated   sound  of  a  guttural  h  before  e,   i: 

general  (heneral). 
h  has  no  sound  at  all.    It  is  a  mere  orthographical  sign: 

Hernandez. 
j  has  the  same  sound  as  aspirated  g  in  all  positions:  San 

Juan,  Junta. 
11  is  a  separate  letter  (found  after  1)  and  sounds  like  Hi  in 

million:    Orellana. 
n  is  a  separate  letter  (found  after  n)  and  sounds  like  ni  in 

onion:    canon,  senor,  manana. 
q  sounds  like  k  and  is  only  found  in  the  combinations  que 

and  qui  (u  being  silent)  :   Quichua,  Quito. 
T  is  always  sounded  clearly  between  two  vowels:    Torihio, 

cara,  Orellana. 
rr  is  a  separate  letter  (found  after  r)  and  is  always  strongly 

trilled:    Carretera,  Arroyo. 
s  always  sounds  like  s  in  seat  (never  like  sh  in  mansion,  or 

z  in  rose)  :   casa.  Las  Casas. 
z  sounds  like  th  in  thin.     It  is  only  used  before  a,  o,  u. 

But  note  that  this  is  not  used  in  Spanish  America. 

When  a  word  ends  with  a  consonant  the  accent  falls  on  the 
last  syllable ;  otherwise,  unless  indicated  by  an  accent,  it  should 
be  placed  on  the  antepenult. 


APPENDIX  II 
THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE 


On  December  2,  1823,  in  his  annual  message  to  Congress, 
President  Monroe  submitted  the  following  recommendation, 
which  has  since  borne  his  name: 

At  the  proposal  of  the  Russian  Imperial  Government,  made 
through  the  minister  of  the  Emperor  residing  here,  a  full 
power  and  instructions  have  been  transmitted  to  the  minister 
of  the  United  States  at  St.  Petersburg  to  arrange  by  amicable 
negotiation  the  respective  rights  and  interests  of  the  two 
nations  on  the  northwest  coast  of  this  continent.  A  similar 
proposal  had  been  made  by  his  Imperial  Majesty  to  the 
Government  of  Great  Britain,  which  has  likewise  been  ac- 
ceded to.  The  Government  of  the  United  States  has  been 
desirous  by  this  friendly  proceeding  of  manifesting  the  great 
value  which  they  have  invariably  attached  to  the  friendship 
of  the  Emperor  and  their  solicitude  to  cultivate  the  best 
understanding  with  his  government.  In  the  discussion  to 
which  this  interest  has  given  rise  and  in  the  arrangements 
by  which  they  may  terminate  the  occasion  has  been  judged 
proper  for  asserting,  as  a  principle  in  which  the  rights  and 
interests  of  the  United  States  are  involved,  tTiat  the  American 
continents,  by  the  free  and  independent  condition  which  they 
have  assumed  and  maintain,  are  henceforth  not  to  be  con- 
sidered as  subjects  for  future  colonization  by  any  European 
powers.   ... 

It  was  stated  at  the  commencement  of  the  last  session  that 
a  great  effort  was  then  making  in  Spain  and  Portugal  to 
improve  the  condition  of  the  people  of  those  countries,  and 
that  it  appeared  to  be  conducted  with  extraordinary  modera- 
tion. It  need  scarcely  be  remarked  that  the  result  has  been 
so  far  very  different  from  what  was  then  anticipated.  Of 
events  in  that  quarter  of  the  globe,  with  which  we  have  so 
much  intercourse  and  from  which  we  derive  our  origin,  we 
have  always  been  anxious  and  interested  spectators.  The 
citizens  of  the  United  States  cherish  sentiments  the  most 
friendly  in  favor  of  the  liberty  and  happiness  of  their  fellow- 

227 


228  THE  NEW  WORLD 

men  on  that  side  of  the  Atlantic.  In  the  wars  of  the  Euro- 
pean powers  in  matters  relating  to  themselves  we  have  never 
taken  any  part,  nor  does  it  comport  with  our  policy  so  to  do. 
It  is  only  when  our  rights  are  invaded  or  seriously  menaced 
that  we  resent  injuries  or  make  preparation  for  our  defense. 
With  the  movement-6  in  this  hemisphere  we  are  of  necessity 
more  immediately  connected,  and  by  causes  which  must  be 
obvious  to  all  enlightened  and  impartial  observers.  The  poli- 
tical system  of  the  allied  powers  is  essentially  different  in 
this  respect  from  that  of  America.  This  difference  proceeds 
from  that  which  exists  in  their  respective  governments ;  and 
to  the  defense  of  our  own,  which  has  been  achieved  by  the 
loss  of  so  much  blood  and  treasure,  and  matured  by  the 
wisdom  of  their  most  enlightened  citizens,  and  under  which 
we  have  enjoyed  unexampled  felicity,  this  whole  nation  is 
devoted.  We  owe  it,  therefore,  to  candor  and  to  the  amicable 
relations  existing  between  the  United  States  and  those  powers, 
to  declare  that  we  should  consider  any  attempt  on  their  part 
to  extend  their  system  to  any  portion  of  this  hemisphere  as 
dangerous  to  our  peace  and  safety.  With  the  existing  colonies 
or  dependencies  of  any  European  power  we  have  not  inter- 
fered and  shall  not  interfere.  But  with  the  governments  who 
have  declared  their  independence  and  maintained  it,  and  whose 
independence  we  have,  on  great  consideration  and  on  just 
principles,  acknowledged,  we  could  not  view  any  interposition 
for  the  purpose  of  oppressing  them,  or  controlling  in  any 
other  manner  their  destiny,  by  any  European  power  in  any 
other  light  than  as  the  manifestation  of  an  unfriendly  dis- 
position toward  the  United  States.  In  the  war  between  those 
new  governments  and  Spain  we  declared  our  neutrality  at 
the  time  of  their  recognition,  and  to  this  we  have  adhered, 
and  shall  continue  to  adhere,  provided  no  change  shall  occur 
which,  in  the  judgment  of  the  competent  authorities  of  this 
government,  shall  make  a  corresponding  change  on  the  part 
of  the  United   States  indispensable  to  their  security. 

The  late  events  in  Spain  and  Portugal  show  that  Europe 
is  still  unsettled.  Of  this  important  fact  no  stronger  proof 
can  be  adduced  than  that  the  Allied  Powers  should  have 
thought  it  proper,  on  any  principle  satisfactory  to  themselves, 
to  have  interposed  by  force  in  the  internal  concerns  of  Spain. 
To  what  extent  such  interposition  may  be  carried,  on  the 
same  principle,  is  a  question  in  which  all  independent  powers 
whose  governments  differ  from  theirs  are  interested,  even 
those  most  remote,  and  surely  none  more  so  than  the  United 
States.  Our  policy  in  regard  to  Europe,  which  was  adopted 
at  an  early  stage  of  the  wars  which  have  so  long  agitated  that 


APPENDIX  229 

quarter  of  the  globe,  nevertheless  remains  the  same,  which 
is,  not  to  interfere  in  the  internal  concerns  of  any  of  its 
Powers;  to  consider  the  government  de  facto  as  the  legiti- 
mate government  for  us;  to  cultivate  friendly  relations  with 
it,  and  to  preserve  those  relations  by  a  frank,  firm  and  manly 
policy,  meeting,  in  all  instances,  the  just  claims  of  every 
power,  submitting  to  injuries  from  none.  But  in  regard  to 
these  continents  circumstances  are  eminently  and  conspicu- 
ously different.  It  is  impossible  that  the  Allied  Powers  should 
extend  their  political  system  to  any  portion  of  either  con- 
tinent without  endangering  our  peace  and  happiness;  nor 
can  any  one  believe  that  our  southern  brethren,  if  left  to 
themselves,  would  adopt  it  of  their  own  accord.  It  is  equally 
impossible,  therefore,  that  we  should  behold  such  interposition 
in  any  form  with  indifference.  If  we  look  to  the  compara- 
tive strength  and  resources  of  Spain  and  those  new  govern- 
ments, and  their  distance  from  each  other,  it  must  be  obvious 
that  she  can  never  subdue  them.  It  is^  still  the  true  policy 
of  the  United  States  to  leave  the  parties  to  themselves,  in 
the  hope  that  other  powers  will  pursue  the  same  course. 


APPENDIX  III 

THE  AMERICAN  CHURCH  MISSIONARY  SOCIETY 

The  American  Church  Missionary  Society  was  founded 
in  New  York  City  on  May  9,  1860,  by  a  group  of  evangelical 
churchmen  who  had  in  mind  the  Church  Missionary  Society 
of  the  Church  of  England.  Its  object  was  "to  extend  and 
build  up  the  kingdom  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in  accordance 
with  the  principles  and  doctrines  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  as  set  forth  in  her  Articles,  Liturgy  and  Homilies.'* 
The  society  was  incorporated  under  the  laws  of  the  State 
of  New  York  in  1861. 

Unlike  the  Domestic  and  Foreign  Missionary  Society  which 
was  founded  by  the  General  Convention  and  is  coterminous 
with  the  Church,  the  American  Church  Missionary  Society 
was  a  voluntary  association  in  which  anyone  approving  of 
its  object  became  a  member  by  the  annual  payment  of  three 
dollars.  Its  officers  and  Executive  Board  were  elected  at 
annual  meetings.  The  president  was  always  a  layman,  and 
the  general  secretary,  a  clergyman. 

As  early  as  1877  the  society  became  a  recognized  auxiliary 
to  the  Board  of  Missions.  Certain  articles  of  agreement  were 
drawn  up  and  accepted  at  the  General  Convention  of  1877. 
By  these  the  American  Church  Missionary  Society  agreed  to 
support  the  missionaries  in  certain  definite  fields.  Within  the 
United  States,  for  example,  it  carried  on  work  in  fifteen 
dioceses  and  missionary  jurisdictions.  In  1873  it  had  assumed 
charge  of  the  work  in  Mexico,  but  relinquished  it  to  the 
Board  in  1877.  In  1888  Cuba  was  put  on  its  list,  and  in  1889 
Brazil. 

In  1905  the  society  transferred  its  work  in  Cuba  and  Brazil 
to  the  Board  of  Missions,  and  by  new  articles  of  agreement 
the  connection  between  the  two  agencies  was  made  closer.^ 

The  society  still  retains  its  corporate  existence,  and  aids 
the  work  in  nine  different  dioceses  and  districts  of  the  do- 
mestic field.  Its  finances  are  administered  by  its  own  execu- 
tive committee.  These  funds,  providing  an  annual  income  of 
about  $20,000,  are  derived  from  the  capital  fund  of^  the 
society,  from  real  estate  held  by  it  and  from  occasional 
legacies  and  contributions. 

230 


APPENDIX  IV 


STATISTICS 


The  following  tables  are  intended  to  show  the  number  of 
foreigners  not  connected  with  the  Roman  Church  doing 
religious  work  in  Latin  America.  It  has  not  been  found 
practical  to  attempt  to  give  any  statistics  of  the  operations 
carried  on  by  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  but  as  the  reader 
well  knows,  in  many  districts  it  is  abundantly  represented. 

Those  who  have  read  the  preceding  chapters  will  perceive 
that  these  tables  do  not  attempt  to  set  forth  what  we  are 
doing,  as  for  example  in  Brazil,  where  fourteen  out  of  the 
eighteen  clergy  are  Brazilians;  and  in  Haiti,  where  all  the 
twelve  ordained  workers  are  native  Haitians. 


Statistics  of  the 

Protestant  Mission  Boards. 

to 

1 

'3 

m 

s 

tl 

-2 
6. 

o'C 

""  <B 

v-i  V 

•4-1    4) 

«a-i   V 

«-■   4) 

o-C 

0-n 

°-c 

og 

^8P 

«-    u 

u  a 

u  a 

t<  ci 

i^ 

•s-2 
^•^? 

U3  O 

X5   O 

11 

11 

^1* 

2  6^ 

^s^ 

^B 

^^ 

^^ 

Argentine  Republic 

14 

65 

47 

3 

3 

15 

Chile 

8 
6 

37 
6 

29 
6 

3 

20 

Uruguay 

5 

Paraguay 

5 

4 

4 

6 

Brazil 

12 
6 
6 
5 

87 

14 

7 

5 

62 
4 

10 
6 

3 
2 

1 

2 
2 

1 

76 

Bolivia 

3 

Peru 

10 

Ecuador 

Dutch  Guiana 

1 

11 

5 

4 

26 

47 

3 

6 

7 
7 

3 

23 

British  Guiana 

60 

Venezuela 

4 

Colombia 

18 

Central     America     (including 

Panama) 

12 
14 

8 

43 
52 
80 

15 

64 

8 

5 
6 

1 

2 
6 

37 

Mexico 

159 

Lesser  Antilles  and  Bahamas.  . 

157 

Porto  Rico    .  .     . 

12 
7 

39 
11 

39 

4 

6 
2 

10 

19 

Haiti  and  Santo  Domingo .... 

15 

11 
11 

62 
43 

15 
32 

1 

218 

Cuba 

59 

Further  and  full  information  about  these  activities  will  be 
found  in  the  reports  of  the  Panama  Conference. 

231 


232 


THE   NEW   WORLD 


Statistics  of  the  Missions  of  the  Anglican  Communion. 

(These  are  not  included  in  the  first  table.) 


tArgentine  Republic 

♦Chile 

Uruguay 

♦Paraguay 

IBrazil 

Bolivia 

Peru 

Ecuador 

Dutch  Guiana 

{British  Guiana 

Venezuela 

Colombia 

tlCentral  America  (including  Panama) 
jMexico 

I  Lesser  Antilles  and  the  Bahamas . . . . 
Porto  Rico 

JHaiti  and  Santo  Domingo 

Ijamaica 

JCuba 


•2 
.s 

c 

o 

3 

6 
o 

°c 

•^E^ 

r: 

"52 

"^•n 

"^S 

f.^ 

1-  rt 

u  O, 

-e*" 

U3  O 

•2"-d 

§^ 

6'S 

3.2 

1^ 

2;  rt 

^^^ 

^.s 

:z:H 

5 

9 

3 

21 

1 

2 

2 

4 

1 

7 

8 

7 

19 

7 

8 

1 

2 

11 

12 

O  00 

16 


8(? 
181 
6 
3 

20 


♦South  American  Missionary  Society. 

tSociety  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel. 

jBoard  of  Missions  of  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  in  the  U.  S.  A. 

{Jamaica  is  a  Diocese  with  89  clergy,  183  licensed  lay-readers,  110  parishes, 
and  250,000  Church  members.  British  Guiana  is  likewise  a  Diocese  and 
has  35  clergy,  100  catechists,  97  parishes,  and  16,736  communicants. 


APPENDIX  V 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Note. — No  attempt  has  been  made  to  make  this  extensive. 
For  the  convenience  of  readers,  books  have  been  put  in  two 
classes : 

I.  Those  which  are  popular  and  to  be  recommended  for 
general  reading. 

II.  Those  to  which  one  should  turn  for  a  thorough  and 
more  exhaustive  treatment  of  the  subject. 

CHAPTER  I 

CLASS   I 

BuLLARD,  A. :  Panama.  Macmillan,  1914.  (A  chatty,  enter- 
taining book,  telling  a  little  of  everything  about  the  early 
days.) 

Prescott,  W.  H.  :  History  of  the  Conquest  of  Peru  (2  vols.). 
History  of  the  Conquest  of  Mexico  (2  vols.).  Many 
editions.  (Classics  which  should  be  read  by  everyone; 
some  of  the  statements  have  been  modified  by  recent 
scholars.) 

Irving,  Washington  :  Voyages  and  Discoveries  of  the  Com- 
panions of  Columbus.     Many  editions. 

CLASS   II 

FisKE,  John:  Discovery  of  America  (2  vols.).  Houghton 
Mifflin,  1892. 

Helps,  Arthur:  The  Spanish  Conquest  in  America  (4  vols.). 
New  edition.    John  Lane,  1900. 

Payne,  Edw.  J.:  History  of  the  New  World  Called  America 
(2  vols.).     Macmillan,  1892  and  1899. 

DE  Las  Casas,  Bartholomew:  Historia  de  las  Indias.  Vol.  I. 
Various  editions. 

Moses,  Bernard  :  The  Spanish  Dependencies  in  South  Amer- 
ica (2  vols.).     Harper  &  Brothers,  1914. 

MacNutt,  F.  a.:  Letters  of  Cortes.  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons. 
1908. 

233 


234  THE   NEW   WORLD 


CHAPTER  n 

CLASS  I 

MacNutt,  F.  a.:  Bartholomew  de  Las  Casas.  G.  P.  Put- 
nam's Sons,  1909. 

MozANS,  H.  J. :  Along  the  Andes  and  Down  the  Amazon, 
Appleton,  1912.  (The  account  of  a  journey  made  by  Dr. 
J.  A.  Zahm  in  which  he  followed  the  trail  of  the  Con- 
quistadores.) 

CLASS  II 

FiSKE,  John:   Discovery  of  America.     (See  above.) 

Helps,  Arthur:  The  Spanish  Conquest  in  America.  (See 
above.) 

Graham,  R.  B.  Cunninghame:  A  Vanished  Arcadia.  Will- 
iam Heineman,  1901. 

DE  Las  Casas.    Historia  de  las  Indias.     (See  above.) 


CHAPTER  HI 

CLASS  I 

Shepherd,  William  R.  :  Latin  America.  Henry  Holt,  1915, 
(Very  compact.    Good  for  introductory  reading.) 

CLASS   II 

Hume,  Martin  A.  S. :  Spain :  Its  Greatness  and  Decay.  3rd 
edition.     Cambridge  University  Press,  1913. 

Lea,  H.  C.  :  A  History  of  the  Inquisition  in  Spain  (4  vols.). 
Macmillan  Co.,  1906. 

Calderon,  F.  Garcia  :  Latin  America :  Its  Rise  and  Progress. 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  1915. 

Ross,  E.  A. :  South  of  Panama.    Century  Company,  1915. 

Dawson,  Thomas  C.  :  The  South  American  Republics  (2 
vols.).     G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  1904. 

Babson,  Roger  W.  :  The  Future  of  South  America.  Little, 
Brown  &  Co.,  1915. 

Bryce,  James  :  South  America  Observations  and  Impressions. 
Macmillan,  1912. 

Clark,  F.  E.  :  The  Continent  of  Opportunity.    Revell,  1907. 

Speer,  Robert  E.  :  South  American  Problems.  Student  Vol- 
unteer Movement,  1912. 

MosES,  Bernard  :  The  Spanish  Dependencies  in  South  Amer- 
ica (2  vols.).     (See  above.) 


APPENDIX  235 

Huntington,   Ellsworth:    Climate   and   Civilization.     Yale 

University  Press,  1915. 
Weale,  L.  B.  Putnam:  The  Conflict  of  Color.     Macmillan, 

1910. 
Woodruff,  C.  E.  :    Expansion  of  Races.     Rebman  Company, 

1909. 

CHAPTER  IV 

PORTO  RICO    (class  i) 

Verrill,  a.  Hyatt:  Porto  Rico,  Past  and  Present;  and  San 
Domingo  To-day.  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.,  1914.  (Readable 
and  reliable.) 

class  ii 

Davis,  Richard  H.  :  The  Cuban  and  Porto  Rican  Campaigns. 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  1904. 

Van  Middledyk,  R.  A. :  The  History  of  Porto  Rico.  Apple- 
ton,  1915. 

RowE,  L.  S. :  The  United  States  and  Porto  Rico.  Longmans 
Green  &  Co.,  1904. 

CANAL   ZONE    (CLASS   l) 

Lindsay,  F.  :   Panama  and  the  Canal  To-day.     L.  C.  Page, 

1910. 
Bullard,  a.:  Panama.     (See  above.) 

CLASS   II 

Anderson,  G.  L.  G.  :  Old  Panama  and  Castilla  del  Oro.    L.  C 

Page,  1914. 
Johnson,   W.    F.  :    Four    Centuries    of   the    Panama   Canal. 

Henry  Holt,  1906. 
Robinson:  Fifty  Years  at  Panama.     Panama,  1907. 
Nelson  :  Five  Years  at  Panama.    Belford  Company,  1889. 
Bunau-Vartlla,  P. :    Panama,  the  Creation,  Destruction  and 

Resurrection.    McBride,  Nast  &  Co.,  1914. 

CHAPTER  V 

CUBA    (class   i) 

Wright,  I.  A. :  Cuba.     Macmillan,  1910. 

class  II 

Robinson,  A.  G. :  Cuba  and  the  Intervention.  Longmans, 
Green  &  Co.,  1905. 


236  THE  NEW  WORLD 

Clark,  W.  J.:  Commercial  Cuba.     Scrlbner,  1898. 
Lindsay,  F.  :  Cuba  and  Her  People  of  To-day.    L.  C.  Page, 
1911. 

HAITI    (class   i) 

Verrill,  a.  Hyatt:    Porto  Rico  Past  and  Present,  and  San 

Domingo  To-day.     (See  above.) 
BoNSAL,   Stephen  :   The   American   Mediterranean.     Charles 

Scribner's  Sons,  1912. 

CLASS  II 

Pritchard,  H.  :  Where  Black  Rules  White.  Charles  Scrib- 
ner's  Sons,  1900. 

St.  John,  Spencer:  Haiti.     Smith,  Elder  &  Co.,  1884. 

Leger,  J.  N. :  Haiti,  Her  History  and  Detractors.  Neale  Pub- 
lishing Co.,  1907. 


CHAPTER  VI 

MEXICO    (class    i) 

Knock,  G.  R.  :  Mexico.    4th  edition.    T.  Fisher  Unwin,  1914. 
Noll,  A.  H.:  A  Short  History  of  Mexico.    McClurg,  1903. 
Henty,  G.  a.  :  By  Right  of  Conquest.    Many  editions. 

class  II 

Prescott,  W.  H.  :  History  of  the  Conquest  of  Mexico.  Many 
editions. 

MacNutt,  F.  A.:    Letters  of  Cortes.     (See  above.) 

Terry,  T.  P. :  Guide  Book  to  Mexico.     Houghton  Mifflin,  1909. 

Turner,  J.  K. :  Barbarous  Mexico.    Charles  H.  Kerr,  1910. 

Bandelier,  a.  F.  :  Report  of  an  Archaeological  Tour  in  Mex- 
ico.   Archaeological  Institute  of  America. 

Martin,  P.  F. :  Mexico  and  the  Twentieth  Century.  Edward 
Arnold,  1907. 

Pan-American  Union  :  Sketch  of  Mexico.  Washington,  D.  C, 
1911. 

BRAZIL    (class   i) 

Winter,  N.  O.  :  Brazil  and  Her  People  of  To-day.  L.  C 
Page  Co.,  1910. 

class  II 

Denis,  P.:  Brazil.    T.  Fisher  Unwin,  1911. 

Speer,  R.  E.  :  South  American  Problems.     (See  above.) 


APPENDIX  237 

Dawson,  T.  C. :  South  American  Republics.     (See  above.) 
Clark,  F.  E.  :    The  Continent  of  Opportunity.     Revell,  1907. 
Bruce,  G.  J.:  Brazil  and  the  Brazilians.     Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.. 

1914. 
Wright,  M.  R.  :  The  New  Brazil.    Barrie  &  Sons,  1914. 

GENERAL    BOOKS 

Goldsmith,  Peter  H.  :  A  Brief  Bibliography  of  Books  in  Eng- 
lish, Spanish  and  Portuguese,  Relating  to  the  Republics 
Commonly  Called  Latin  America.     Macmillan,  1915. 

O'RoRKE,  B.  G.:  Our  Opportunity  in  the  West  Indies.  S.  P. 
G.,  1913. 

Every,  E.  F.  :  Anglican  Church  in  South  America,  S.  P.  C.  K.. 
1915. 

Stuntz,  H.  :  South  American  Neighbours.  Missionary  Edu- 
cation Movement,  1916. 

Calderon,  F.  G.  :  Latin  America:  Its  Rise  and  Progress. 
(See  above.) 

Shepherd,  W.  R.  :  Latin  America.     (See  above.) 

Ross,  E.  A.:  South  of  Panama.     (See  above.) 

Bryce,  James  :  South  America  Observations  and  Impressions. 
(See  above.) 

Moses,  Bernard:  The  Spanish  Dependencies  in  South  Amer- 
ica.    (See  above.) 

Hart,  A.  B. :  The  Monroe  Doctrine — An  Interpretation. 
Little,  Brown  &  Co.,  1916. 

Sherrill,  C.  H.  :  Modernizing  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  Hough- 
ton Mifflin,  1916. 


The  End 


INDEX 


Africans,  slave  trade,  47,  151 ;  in  the  Americas,  81-4,  94 

Aguadilla,  90 

Alaska,  20,  24,  89 

Allan,  Rev.  Mr.,  100 

Allen,  C.  H.,  governor  of  Porto  Rico,  91 

Amador,  Dr.,  114 

Amazon,  Pizarro's  expedition  up  the,  8-13 

America,  early  history,  discoverers,  3-30;  early  missionaries 
in,  31-59;  races,  climate  and  geography,  60-86 

American  Church  Missionary  Society,  140,  143;  in  Haiti,  163; 
in  Mexico,  194;  in  Brazil,  210,  213,  229 

Ancon,  mission  at,  126 

Antigua,  Bishop  of,  101,  118 

Antilles,  24,  11;   spiritualism  of,  99 

Arawaks,  24-7,  Zl ,  150 

Argentine  Republic,  area,  population,  63 ;  agricultural  and  cat- 
tle resources,  67,  76,  82,  84 

Aves,  Bishop  H.  D.,  on  conditions  in  Mexico,  185-9;  elected 
bishop,  first  report  to  Board,  198-9 

Aztecs,  treasure  cities  of,  24,  26;  monarchical  system  of,  38, 
176,  187 

Baez,  Rev.  J.  B.,  work  in  Cuba,  141 

Bage,  school  at,  217-18 

Bahia,  82,  203,  209 

Balboa,  Vasco  Nufiez  de,  discovers  Pacific  Ocean,  19-21,  109 

Barbadoes,  diocese  of,   102,   118 

Bering  Strait,  Eskimos  cross,  40 

Besant,  Mrs..  99 

Board  of  Missions,  140,  163,  166,  194,  209 

Bogota,  112,  115 

Bolivar,  Simon,  vi,  vii 

Bolivia,  area,  population,  resources,  dZ,  66-1;  an  Indian  na- 
tion, 81 

Brazil,  62;  area,  population,  63,  206;  resources  of,  66-8;  Afri- 
can slaves  in,  82;  early  history,  201-8;  the  church  in, 
208-23;  Rev.  R.  Holden  in,  209;  Revs.  Morris  and  Kin- 
239 


240  INDEX 

solving  begin  work  in,  211-12;  Miss  Packard's  work  in, 
212;    first    convocation,    in    Porto    Alegre,    212;    Bishop 
Peterkin's  visitation,  213;  Dr.  Kinsolving  elected  bishop 
of,   213-14;    schools   started,  217;   summary   of   church's 
work  in,  219-21 
British  and  American  Bible  Society,  219 
Brown,  Chaplain,  U.  S.  A.,  work  in  Ponce,  102-4 
Brown,  Rev.  W.  C.,  elected  Bishop  of  Porto  Rico,  and  declines, 

104;  work  in  Brazil,  219 
Bryan,  Rev.  H.  B.,  Archdeacon  of  Panama,  121 
Burgess,  Bishop,  in  Haiti,  166-7 
Burgos,  laws  of,  45 

Cabral,  Mr.,  219 

Canal  Zone,  French  attempt  to  build  canal,  109;  United  States 
in,  110-17;  map,  facing  p.  117;  the  church  in,  117-26; 
Christ  Church,  Colon,  117,  121 ;  American  church  re- 
acquires jurisdiction  over,  119;  Archdeacon  Bryan  in, 
120;  Rev.  E.  J.  Cooper  in,  120;  present  staff  in,  121 ;  under 
Bishop  Knight,  121-6 

Cap  Haytien.  152,  160 

Caribs,  2,1,  38 

Cartagena,  57 

Casa  de  Contratacion,  29 

Caunt,  Rev.  Frederick,  in  charge  at  Ponce,  103 

Cayey,  Bishop  Whipple  visits,  103 

Charles  II,  71,  72 

Charles  III,  76 

Charles  V,  Cortez*  letter  to,  18;  and  Augsburg  bankers,  27; 
policy  of,  69 

Chiapa,  Las  Casas  in,  53-6 

Chili,  area,  population,  resources,  63,  d^),  81,  82,  84 

Christ  Church,  Panama,  117,  119;  Rev.  Cooper  in  charge,  121 

Christophe,  153 

Church  of  England,  101;  cedes  jurisdiction  in  Panama,  119-21 

Clark,  Mrs.  John,  198 

Clark,  Rev.  F.  P.,  211 

Claver,  Peter,  57 

Clayton-Bulwer  treaty,  110 

Colmore,  Charles  B.,  Bishop  of  Porto  Rico,  105,  172-4;  on 
Porto  Rico,  92-5.  97,  155,  167 

Colombia,  area,  population,  resources,  63-6,  81;  United  States 
dealings  with,  110-17 

Colon,  Christ  Church  at,  117,  119,  126 

Columbus,  discovers  America,  5;  like  Livingstone,  16;  tomb 
at  Havana,  32;  and  the  natives,  34-6 


INDEX  241 

Cooper,  Rev.  E.  J.,  at  Colon,  121 

Cooper,  Rev.  W.  H.,  209 

Cordova,  Pedro  de,  in  Hispaniola,  42,  43 

Cortez,  Hernando,  13,  17;  letter  to  Charles  V,  18;  search  for 
gold,  26,  69,  177 

Costa  Rica,  area  and  population,  63,  67 

Council  of  the  Indies,  68 

Coxe,  Bishop,  in  Haiti,  167-8 

Crab  Island  (Vieques),  104,  107 

Cristobal,  mission  at,  126 

Cuba,  Las  Casas  in,  25,  44;  area,  population,  63;  African 
slaves  in,  82;  early  history,  127-33;  American  occupation, 
130;  independence  achieved,  132;  of  to-day,  133-7;  the 
church  in,  137-50;  Mr.  Duarte  in.  138-43;  Bishop  Young's 
visit,  140;  Rev.  J.  B.  Baez  in,  141;  Rev.  A.  W.  Knight 
elected  bishop  of,  143;  list  of  church's  work  in,  147; 
Rev.  H.  R.  Hulse  succeeds  Bishop  Knight,  149 

Daly.  Charles  H.,  99 

Dartiguenave,  Gen.  Andre,  160 

de  Lesseps,   109 

de  Mora,  Rev.  A.  H.,  190 

Dessalines,   153 

Diaz,  Porfirio,  82;  epoch  of,  182ff.,  199 

Diego,  Jose  de,  96,  97 

Dominican  Republic,  area  and  population,  63 

Dominicans    in  America,  32,  42-56 

Duarte,  Pedro,  138-42 

DuBois,  Rev.  J.  C,  101 

Dumaresq,  Francis  B.,  105 

Dyer,  Dr.  Heman,  193 

Ecuador,  area,  population,  resources,  63,  67;  Indians  in,  81 
Ehinger,  Heinrich,  27 
El  Coto,  mission  at,  107 
Empire,  mission  at,  126 
Encomienda,  the,  36 

Fajardo,  92;  mission  at,  107 
Federalist  party,  in  Porto  Rico,  88 
Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  8,  62 
Forrester,  Henry,  198 
Franciscan  Order,  32,  56 

Gatun,  mission,  126 

General  Convention  of  1901,  104;  of  1913,  105;  at  Boston, 
143;  of  1913,  172;  of  1874,  193;  of  1904,  198 


242  INDEX 

Gomez,  Maximo,  128 

Gordon,  Rev.  W.  B.,  in  Mexico,  197-8 

Gorgas,  Dr.  Wm.  C.,  cited,  86 

Graham,  Cunninghame,  59 

Greater  Antilles,  union,  96 

Guantanamo,  Cuba,  145,  146 

Guatemala,  missionaries  in,  49,  53;  area,  population,  63 

Guiana,  62;  diocese  of,  102 


Haiti,  Columbus  in,  16 ;  Las  Casas  in,  34,  41 ;  Friars  arrive  in, 
42;  area,  population,  63,  82,  160;  history,  150-62;  Bishop 
Colmore  on,  155,  159;  Voodooism  in,  156-9;  the  church 
in,  162-74;  map,  facing  p.  173;  Dr.  Holly's  work  in,  162; 
Bishop  of  Delaware's  visit,  164;  Bishop  Burgess'  visit, 
166;  Holy  Trinity  Church,  Port  au  Prince,  166;  Bishop 
Coxe's  visit,  167;  Dr.  Holly  elected  bishop  of,  170;  death 
in  1911,  171;  comes  under  Bishop  Colmore's  jurisdiction, 
172-4;  list  of  churches  in,  175;  report  on  mission  in, 
168  ff. 

Havana,  Columbus  buried  at,  32,  63,  105;  University,  134; 
Cathedral,  145-6 

Hay-Herran  treaty,  112,  116 

Hay,  John,  110-14 

Hernandez,  Rev.  P.  G.,  195 

Hidalgo,  180 

Holden,  Rev.  R.,  in  Brazil,  209,  218 

Holly,  Bishop  James  Theodore,  in  Haiti,  162-70;  death,  171 

Holy  Trinity  Church,   106 

Holy  Trinity  Church,  Port  au  Prince,  166 

Honduras,  Las  Casas  in,  54;  area,  population,  etc.,  63,  66; 
diocese,  102,  111 

Hooker,  Mrs.  M.  J.,  198 

Huallaga  River,  56,  57 

Hulse,  Rt.  Rev.  H.  R.,  149 

Incas,  treasure  cities,  24,  26,  38-40 

Indians,  in  America,  37-42,  47-53,  81-4;  in  Mexico,  184 

Indies,  24,  27,  29,  34;  Dominicans  in,  45,  73 

Inquisition,  the,  32 

Isabel  Segunda,  107 

Isabella,  Ferdinand  and,  8,  34,  35 

Isle  of  Pines,  144,  145 

Jaguarao,  214 

Jamaica,  62;  diocese,  102,  118 


INDEX  243 

Jesuits,  56,  58,  59 

Juarez,  story  of,  179-82,  189 

Kinsolving,  Rev.  L.  L.,  pioneer  in  Brazil,  204,  211-12;  ap- 
pointed bishop,  213;  resignation,  elected  to  new  district, 
214,  219 

Knight,  Bishop,  105;  supervises  work  in  canal  zone,  121-4; 
elected  bishop  of  Cuba,  143-7;  visits  Haiti,  171;  on  Latin 
countries,  221-2 

La  Boca,  mission  at,  126 

La  Gloria,  Cuba,  145 

Las  Casas,  15,  23-55 

Laws  of  the  Indies,  70 

League,   to  aid   Mexican    Church,    formed,    194 

Lee,  Bishop  of  Delaware,  164,  193 

Lerma,  Duke  of,  72-4 

Les  Cayes,  160 

L'Ouverture,  Toussaint,  153 

McCoskry,  Bishop,  163 

McKinley,  President,  on  Cuba,  128 

McLaren,  Bishop,  102 

Maine,  U.  S.  battleship,  blown  up,  129 

Martinique,   102 

Martyn,  Henry,  in  Brazil,  208 

Matanzas,  Duarte  in,  138;  Baez  in,  141-3 

Maximilian,  Archduke,  180-2,  190 

Mayaguez,  agricultural  school  at,  93;  Bishop  Whipple  at,  103; 
work  in,  107 

Mexico,  Arawaks  of,  38;  creed  of  Mexicans,  40;  Zumarraga 
in,  57 ;  area,  population,  63 ;  mineral  and  other  resources, 
66-7;  Indians  in,  81,  184;  Europeans  in,  84;  early  history 
of,  176-89;  Quetzalcoatl  legend.  177-9;  Maximilian  em- 
peror of,  180;  career  of  Juarez,  180-2;  regime  of  Porfirio 
Diaz,  182;  mineral  and  agricultural  resources.  184;  Bishop 
Aves  on,  185-6.  188;  the  church  in,  189-200;  map.  facing 
p.  189;  Rev.  E.  J.  Nicholson  in,  191;  Rev.  H.  C  Riley  in, 
191;  Bishop  Lee's  visit,  193;  bishops  elected  for,  195; 
Revs.  Gordon  and  Forrester  in,  197-8;  work  of  Bishop 
Aves,  198-9 

Mexico,  City  of,  196-7 

Mogrovejo,  Toribio  de,  58 

Monefeldt,  Mr.,  103 

Monroe  Doctrine,  vi,  vii,  110-11,  154,  227 

Montesimos,  Antonio  de,  42,  45 


244  INDEX 

Montezuma,  treasure  in  palace  of,  26;  splendor  of,  38;  Cortez 

attacks,  177-8 
Morris,  Rev.  J.  W.,  in  Brazil,  211-12,  216-18 
Mosquito  Indians,  mission,  118 
Mulcare,  Rev.  T.,-  124 
Myers,  Dean,  on  Cuba,  135 

Napoleon  I,  179;  III,  182 

Nassau,  diocese  of,  101 

Negroes,  interbred  with  Chinese,  81,  83-4;  in  Haiti,  152;  in 

West  Indies,  106-7,  145 
New  Spain,  18;  Dominicans  in,  50,  60,  69 
Nicaragua,  area  and  population,  63 
Nicholson,  Rev.  E.  J.,  in  Mexico,  191 
North  American  Indians,  38  et  seq. 

Oaxaca,  69 

Orellana,  Pizarro's  subordinate,  10 

Organic  Act,  91,  96 

Ormsby,  Bishop,  117 

Ovando,  governor,  36 

Pacific  ocean,  discovery,  19-21 

Packard,  Miss  Mary,  in  Brazil,  212 

Paez,  82 

Palma,  T.  Estrada,  Cuban  president,  132 

Palo  Seco,  mission  at,  126 

Panama,  area,  population,  63;  Africans  in,  82;  sanitation  in, 
86,  110 

Panama  Canal,  63,  86,  89;  French  attempt  to  build,  109  ff.; 
opened  by  United  States,  124 

Panama  City,  mission  at,  126 

Paraguay,  early  missionaries  in,  56-9;  area,  population,  prod- 
ucts, 63,  67,  81 

Paraiso,  mission  at,  126 

Pernambuco,  203 

Peru,  Spaniards  in,  v,  13,  26,  58;  Incas  of,  38,  40;  area,  popu- 
lation, products,  63-7,  76,  81,  82 

Peterkin,  Bishop,  103,  213  '• 

Philip  II,  29,  61,  62,  71,  74;  III,  71-2;  IV,  71 

Pizarro,  Francisco,  13 

Pizarro,  Gonzalo,  8  et  seq.,  109 

Piatt  amendment,  132-3 

Ponce,  the  church  in,  99-106 

Port  au  Prince,  150,   160-1,  165,  173 

Porto  Alegre,  206-7 ;  our  work  in,  212-18 


INDEX  245 

Porto  Rico,  area,  population,  63,  91;  early  explorers  in,  90; 
American  flag  raised  in,  90-1;  public  schools  in,  92; 
Bishop  Colmore  in,  95-99;  the  church  in,  99-108;  map, 
facing  p.  101;  Bishop  McLaren  in,  102;  Rev.  George  B. 
Pratt  in,  102;  Bishop  Whipple's  visit,  102-3;  Ponce,  work 
in,  103-4;  Bishop  Peterkin's  visit,  103;  San  Juan,  work 
in,  103-7;  St.  John's  Church,  106;  St.  Luke's  Church,  106; 
St.  Luke's   Hospital,    106,   172 

Portugal,  61 ;  seizes  Brazil,  68,  201 

Portuguese  Bible  and  Prayer  Book,  revision  of,  218-19 

Potter,  Bishop  H.  C,  cited,  87 

Pratt,  Rev.  George  B.,  in  San  Juan,  102,  104 

Puerta  de  Tierra,  98-9,  106 

Quetzalcotl,  Mexican  god,  40,  157,  177-8 
Quinones,  Antonio  de,  18 

Riley,  Rev.  H.  C,  in  Mexico,  189,  191-7 

Rio  de  Janeiro,  82;  Portuguese  court  at,  204,  206 

Rio  Grande  do  Sul,  207,  214,  216 

Rio  Piedras,  93 

Rivera,  Luis  Mufioz,  96-7 

Robinson,   Tracy,   117 

Roderick,  Rev.  R.  A.,  211 

Roosevelt,  President,  110;  on  Colombia,  115 

Ross,  Professor,  60,  68 

St.  Lucia,  102 

Sailer,  Heironymous,  27 

Salvador,  area,  population,  63,  67 

Sam,  Guillaume,  161 

Sam,  President  Simon,  154 

San  Domingo,  disorders  in,  82 

San  Francisco,  convention  at,  104 

San  Juan,  convention  at,  96-9;  our  work  in,  102-6. 

Santiago,  52-3;  Cuban  province,  144,  146 

Santo  Domingo,  disorders  in,  82 

Santo  Domingo  City,  founded,  32 

Shaw,  Rev.  R.,  118 

Snake  worship,   157 

Sao  Paulo,  Brazil,  203,  207,  212 

South  America,  races,  climate,  resources,  and  settlement  of, 

60-86;  the  church  in,  87  et  seq. 
Spain,  45,  colonial  expansion,  61;  decay,  71-4;  cedes  islands 

to  United  States,  89;  loses  Cuba,  128 
Spanish- American  War,  130 


246  INDEX 

Spanish  Government,  decree,  99,  137 

Spirit  of  Adissions,  cited,  99,  100,  101,  102,  103,  104,  124,  143, 

145,  163,  167,  171,  190,  199,  216 
Stevens,  Bishop,  140 
Stranger,  Rev.  I.  N.,  210 

Theosophists,  98 
Toltecs,  177 

Trinidad,  diocese  of,  102 
Tuzulutlan,  48,  52 

Uruguay,  area,  population,  63,  68,  82 

Van  Buren,  Rt.  Rev.  James  H.,  104-5 

Venezuela,  Welser  expedition,  27,  28;  area,  population,  63,  B2 

Vieques,  104,  107 

Virginia,  settlers  in,  their  motives,  23,  24,  215 

Voodooism,  in  Haiti,  156-59,  173 

Welser,  Venezuelan  expedition  of,  27 
West  Indies,  62;  dioceses  in,  101 
Whipple,  Bishop,  in  Porto  Rico,  102-3 
Whitaker,  Bishop,  140 
Williams,  Bishop,  163 

Ximenez,  Cardinal,  47 

Young,  Bishop,  140,  143 

Zumarraga,  Juan  de,  57 


BW4471  .G77 
The  new  world. 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00034  7163 


